THE SLAVE IN THE EMPTY GRAVE ...

THE SLAVE IN THE EMPTY GRAVE by Raymond J. Libert (Dorrance: $6.95; 28 pp., paperback original). This slim novella describes the efforts of 16-year-old James to work his way across the South during the Depression. Stranded in Georgia, the industrious James makes a discovery that enables him to aid his benefactors, the last members of a family ruined by the Civil War. Libert writes agreeably, but this story belongs in an anthology of new writing, rather than in a book by itself.