["The Forge" is] an honest and altogether intelligent effort to accomplish … [a] "study" of Alabama during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Every page of "The Forge" bears ample evidence to its author's preparation for his task, to his intimate knowledge of the people concerned as well as of events and issues involved; moreover, to the possession of certain qualities of humor, irony, and objectivity that have hitherto been wanting in the reactions of Southerners to their tragic inheritance. Yet the novel remains less a story than a "study," less a dramatic presentation of credible characters suffering in a coil of calamity than the informed commentary of a benevolent observer. All the necessary features of the picture are conscientiously enumerated and delineated: the aristocratic Lacefields and their baronial plantation, the ruder Vaiden yeomanry, the trader BeShears and his kind (who inherit the earth!) the negro slaves, black and mulatto...