Then Like The Blind Man: Orbie’s Story

A storm is brewing in the all-but-forgotten back country of Kentucky. And for young Orbie Ray, the swirling heavens may just have the power to tear open his family’s darkest secrets. Then Like The Blind Man: Orbie’s Story, a rural-American version of Hamlet by author Freddie Owens, tells the story of an extraordinary little boy in the segregated south of the 1950s, and the forces he must overcome to restore order in his world.

Feisty nine-year-old Orbie Ray hates his stepfather even more than he does kids whose skin color he doesn’t trust—a fact that lands him at Harlan’s Crossroads, there to spend a drought summer on his grandparent’s dirt farm while his family travels on to Florida’s sunny climes. Resentful, fearing for his naively religious mother, Orbie pines for the return of his dead father. To make matters worse, he must now deal with his maverick ‘n-word loving’ grandparents and the black Pentecostal congregation of snake handlers to which they belong.

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