The Quest of the Silver Fleece

Du Bois’s first novel unfolds in the cotton country of Alabama, where two young people, Bles Alwyn and the wild, gifted Zora, come of age amid poverty and racial oppression. Cotton is the silver fleece of the title, a crop that enriches planters and merchants while grinding down the people who grow it. As Bles reaches for education and Zora finds her own power, both are drawn into a web of ambition, betrayal, and political corruption that stretches from the rural South to Washington. Part love story and part economic argument, the book dramatizes the ideas about labor and race that Du Bois pursued all his life. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.