Scarlet Sister Mary is a 1928

1928 in literature

The year 1928 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Ford Madox Ford publishes Last Post. It is the final book of a four-volume work titled Parade's End published between 1924 and 1928....

 novel by Julia Peterkin

Julia Peterkin

Julia Peterkin was an American fiction writer....

. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1929.

The book was called obscene and banned at the public library in Gaffney, South Carolina

Gaffney, South Carolina

Gaffney is a city in and the county seat of Cherokee County, South Carolina, United States, in the upstate region of South Carolina. Gaffney is also sometimes referred to as the Peach capital of South Carolina. The population was 12,414 at the 2010 census...

. The Gaffney Ledger newspaper, however, serially published the complete book.

Dr. Richard S. Burton, the chairperson of Pulitzer's fiction-literature jury, recommended that the first prize go to the novel Victim and Victor by Dr.John B. Oliver. His nomination was superseded by the School of Journalism's choice of Peterkin's book. Evidently in protest, Burton resigned from the jury.

Synopsis

Scarlet Sister Mary is set among the Gullah

Gullah

The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands....

 people of the Low Country in South Carolina. The date is never clearly established, but appears to be around the beginning of the twentieth century. The title character, Mary, was an orphan on an abandoned plantation who was raised by Auntie Maum Hannah and her crippled son Budda Ben. The description of Mary as "Scarlet Sister" reflects the basic conflict in the novel as Mary is torn between her desire to be a member in good standing in the church and a desire to live a life of sin and pleasure.