Joe Christmas, a man uncertain whether he is Black or white, moves through Mississippi toward the doom that awaits him. Lena Grove, heavily pregnant, searches for the father of her child. Faulkner published this in 1932, and it is his most violent exploration of race in America. The prose circles, doubles back, withholds crucial information until the pressure becomes unbearable. The ending is shocking and inevitable. Memory believes before knowing remembers: the novel performs what that phrase describes.