Stones in My Passway, Hellhound on My Trail Study Guide

The story begins on a Saturday night in 1938 at a bar called the House Party Club in Dallas where a man named Robert plays the guitar and sings, his voice affecting both the men and women patrons of the club. The House Party Club, owned by a man named Huddie Doss, is dark, dingy, and filled with rowdy field hands and other laborers who slip on the spit and tobacco juice on the floor. Robert sits on a stool at the opposite end of the room from the bar made from a wooden plank stretched across two barrels. Robert lives for his music, traveling around the south, and sometimes forgetting to eat, as he has for the past two days. (read more)