Behold, This Dreamer

By Charlotte Miller

Janson Sanders, part Cherokee, part poor-but-proud white, is intent on avenging his father’s death and taking back the land stolen from him by a wealthy planter. Parentless and alone, Janson sets out, hopping a train with only a few biscuits and some cold pieces of chicken to his name. Thus begins a journey across the South to earn enough money to return home and reclaim his birthright. He eventually settles on rich landowner William Whitley’s land, working alongside the poverty-stricken sharecroppers during the day and bootlegging illegal liquor at night, hoarding what little money he earns toward the redemption of his own land. Along the way, he falls in love—despite himself—with Whitley’s daughter. Separated by class and culture, the two young lovers struggle with their own differences while trying to keep their relationship secret from her temperamental, overbearing, and dangerous father. Set against the backdrop of rural life in the South during the twenties, Behold, This Dreamer is a story of hope and heartbreak, in which Janson Sanders is pulled one way by his love of the land and another way by his love of a woman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2001
• ISBN: 9781603062640

Charlotte Miller

CHARLOTTE MILLER was born in Roanoke, Alabama in 1959 and has never lived outside the South. She began writing her Sanders family trilogy while a student at Auburn University, where she received a degree in business administration. Today, she works as a certified public accountant to pay the bills, and writes late into the night because she must. Behold, This Dreamer (2000), Through a Glass, Darkly (2001), and There Is a River (2002) complete her multi-generational saga of the agricultural and cotton mill South. One of her short stories, “An Alabama Christmas,” was included in the bestselling 1999 regional collection, Ordinary & Sacred As Blood: Alabama Women Speak. She is a member of the Georgia Writers and the National League of American Pen Women. She lives in Opelika, Alabama and has one son, Justin.