Review of The Baptism by Shelia P. Moses

The Baptism is a week in the life of the twelve-year-old twins Leon and Luke Curry as their baptism approaches. Leon is the narrator, and Leon manages to get in trouble more than any boy should during the week he's fixing to be saved--or rather during the week before the baptism his mother has dictated. Living on the Occoneechee Neck, the twins, their older brother Joe ("Joe Nasty" to Leon), and their mother Lemuel have had a tough time of it since the boys' father was murdered, presumably for asking a white man for money that was owed him for some work he'd done. It's no wonder Lemuel has remarried, but Leon has little use for "Filthy Frank," and eventually his suspicions of his lazy stepfather are borne out by events.

One reason Leon keeps getting in trouble is his propensity for picking fights with his "White Cousin"--everybody knows that Lemuel is the half-sister of the local landowner who has inherited the tobacco fields that have been in the family for generations--but people don't generally talk about it. Family relations are difficult with a history of racial injustice simmering on the edge of boiling over--and one cousin has had to hightail it North after being accused of interfering with a white woman.

The Curry family is poor, and they have had to face more challenges than such good, God-fearing folks should have to, including a storm that takes the roof off of Grandma Curry's house, but all the members are proud and honest. These characteristics are what get poor Leon whipped on a regular basis. Throughout the week this book covers, Leon tries to cope with the pressure to be good and to get himself to his baptism for his mother's and his twin's sakes, at least. It's a tricky battle, but he comes through, and when the next Sunday rolls round, some of the community and family tensions are resolved.

Moses has created a wonderful twelve-year-old character, a wry observer of the society into which he's been born whose sense of fairness is sometimes outraged but who mostly tries pretty hard to please his family and live up to his father's memory. Like Zora Neale Hurston's novels, this story is worth reading just for the sake of the story, but Moses also gives the reader a window into a Southern rural past with vivid dialogue and details.