Tell Me a Tale: A Novel of the Old South

Tell Me a Tale is a novel set during the last years of slavery in North Carolina plantation township. During the decade following the Civil War, the village of Red Springs, NC had not changed very much. It is steeped in the socially rigid behavior of the old South, the white South. A young black man named Moses has traveled many long miles to reach McMillan's General Store. Here, sitting around the stove in their usual haunt, he finds the men he seeks. The young man enters the ill-kept emporium and finds the four old-timers gossiping and whittling. The very presence of a negro shocks them, but they don't recognize Moses as a former slave from a nearby plantation. Still bitter and angry over the Emancipation of the area's slaves, these four very unreconstructed whites are in no mood to listen to anything a colored person has to say, let alone one whose motives they automatically, instinctively suspect. With the help of some fine cognac Moses has brought along for the occasion, he lightens the spirits of these mean old codgers with drink and the remarkable story he spins out over the next several hours, Moses tells them a tale of a young male slave, the boys white father who keeps a painful distance from the son he refuses to acknowledge, the youth's wise "uncle"-a proud and complex former slave named Ben-and the fire that destroyed his former master's plantation. It is a story rich in love and hope, but ultimately poisoned by the ruinous deeds of hateful men.

Born on May 20, 1930 in Rennert, North Carolina, McEachin spent his early years in Hackensack, New Jersey where he joined the Army and served in Korea earning the Silver Star and Purple Heart. Following his military service McEachin spent time as a firefighter and policeman in New Jersey before moving to California where he would dabble in the music industry with the likes of Otis Redding and The Fury’s before landing his first acting job and becoming an accomplished actor, and later in his career, an award-winning writer. McEachin currently resides in Southern California and spends his time touring the country while performing his one-man play Above the Call; Beyond the Duty. The play opened in 2008 at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. January 20, 2012 brings McEachin to the Junction City Opera House before an audience of active duty troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and based in Ft. Riley, Kansas at the behest of Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) Homecoming 2012 welcoming home the 1st and 2nd Brigades. His most repeated line sums up his mission: ＂No Veterans, no Democracy. No Democracy, No America＂