Book excerpt: BLUES CHASED A RABBIT is the gripping story of Jason Defoy, a black musician whose cool life in New York seems light years away from the miserable Mississippi origins he recalls with frustrated anger and scorn. The accidental death of his pregnant wife suddenly disrupts his life and forces a confrontation. Unable to face the torment in his mind, unable to find solace in drugs, simulated sex, or old friendships, he finds himself driven like a hunted animal to his roots in the South. Nameless and penniless, alone on the Mississippi Road, he falls victim to the medieval vagrancy laws which, to this day, permit southern farmers to exploit free labour. He becomes a virtual slave, chattelled to Harlan Smith, a southern white farmer struggling to hold on to a way of life he knows is fast disappearing. The relationships between Jason, his fellow captive Robart, and their sadistic yet poignantly wretched white master, form the background of a story which is unique in its perceptive treatment of the violence underlying the black-white confrontation in America today. BLUES CHASED A RABBIT is a brutally human novel which tells the truth as it has rarely been told before.