God Sends Sunday follows Nigger Heaven in its emphasis upon sex and fast living, but differs in its introduction of a main character who is a celebrated jockey and a prodigal libertine in the racing centers of the Mississippi Valley. (p. 172)

In its abandonment of the Harlem background, God Sends Sunday exemplifies a new trend in fiction showing the influence of Nigger Heaven. Besides, more than any other novel in the Van Vechten tradition, it avoids race consciousness. (p. 173)

[Another novel by Bontemps, Black Thunder,] treats the abortive slave insurrection under Gabriel Prosser in Virginia in 1800…. (p. 213)

The underlying thesis of Black Thunder … is that Negro slaves, with the exception of a small number bound in mind as well as in body, had an obsessive love of freedom. (p. 214)

Black Thunder is written with restraint and detachment. Bontemps portrays slaves, freedmen, planters, and French radicals with impartiality, showing...