When a father suddenly disappears from the life of a young boy, a new role is carved out for Arthur as he struggles through life's challenges. Growing up as the eldest male child in a family destined to support themselves by sharecropping on a cotton plantation during the Jim Crow era, Arthur daydreams about the day this daddy will return.
In the meantime, his colorful, hard-working mother is focused on keeping her four children fed, clothed and protected from the likes of people who murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till in a community not too far from the Hobbs Plantation where Arthur came to know the life of sharecroppers. As Arthur's family moved from shotgun house to shotgun house, the personal stories of characters in and out of their lives are painful at times and joyous and funny at other moments.
Nicknamed Bird, Arthur finally figures out how to fly above poverty, pain, many injustices, and a seemingly hopeless longing for the love of his father.
If young Arthur could write well, he would have written this book. However, it's 1955 and school is a special treat reserved for those who can't physically work in the cotton fields or who are not from poor black sharecropping families. In the Deep South, the 1950s were thick with down-home blues, racism, sweat, cotton, tobacco, and mosquitos with just a touch of tenderness. To Arthur, none of that was the most important matter in his life. Every day that his sharecropping mother went to work was a day for him to ponder the impacts of being the "man" of the house and more time to explore and become frustrated about why is father was missing, when he would return and just where in God's name was he!
"Fatherless" is not the typical sob story of a child who grew up without a dad. In "Fatherless," author Larry McCoy takes us on a journey through the day to day existence of a sharecropping family in the Mississippi Delta. He does so through the eyes of an abandoned child and manages to stay true to the dialect and authentic culture of the time. Peppered with stories of humor, history, pain and life lessons, "Fatherless" reveals the private thoughts of a young boy as he grows in coping with loss and begins to focus on hopes and opportunities of each new day.
