Southern Cross the Dog
A Novel

This book is by a friend of mine. This friend of mine, Bill Cheng, is "the shit." So is his book. I had the distinct privilege to be around while this was being written, got to hear it come out chapter by chapter every two to four weeks or so. When you are being held captive on a rowboat in the midd......more

Cheng's book opens in the Mississippi delta. It's the spring of 1927 and a group of children are playing, teasing, flirting at the boundaries of adolescent exploration. Yes, they are black, but playing among themselves, this is of little consequence at the moment. What is of consequence is that in a......more

I was totally taken aback by this book. It was a debut novel and although the early reviews were good, I wasn't prepared for how good it was. It was very good. The thing that blew me away was how well Bill Cheng was able to capture the feel of the times and place the novel was set. Why, because the......more

Southern Cross the Dog effectively creates a sense of place, the Mississippi Delta in the early 20th century, a world of danger, racial hatred, disappointment, and occasional hope. The descriptions of the land are vivid and often fresh (though sometimes confusing and amateurish). Overall, the creati......more

a debut novel about the 1927 miss. flood and aftermath for one family and the young boy robert is given away by his parents as they are stuck on a high spot with no hope of surviving. so robert grows up an orphan. then rambles around and gets kidnapped in the pearl river swamp by cajuns, then escape......more