The eight golden pears grow mysteriously in the south, land of long ago... when slavery was only yesterday, and the myths and beliefs in curses and woe threaten behavior, and secret knowledge hangs in the humid air, like Spanish moss in the cottonwood trees...This unusual book is a parable-of evil, and rape, and the strange growths that can flower in secret gardens... Gold-the golden pears, the golden ornament that appears from nowhere-runs like a bright thread through this novel of the unseen and the unknown.