Chester Bomar Himes's career extended from the mid 1930s to the mid 1980s, a time of enormous social change and racial turmoil in the United States. His work is remarkable for the honesty, intensity, and artistic skill with which it represents such a pivotal and turbulent period. Central to his writing is an unusually bold treatment of interracial sex as well as a frank and graphic portrayal of the persistent violence that characterizes race relationships in America. Himes mastered a wide variety of fictional forms, including the short story, the protest novel, the detective novel, and the satiric novel. In addition, he was an accomplished polemical writer and journalist. A controversial figure throughout his career, he was, for the most part, underappreciated in America and, according to H. Bruce Franklin, was "not only one of the most neglected major American authors, but also one of the most misunderstood...