And in the afternoon they entered a land - but such a land! A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay.

Due to hostility against him after two 1885 essays encouraging racial equality and opposing Jim Crow Cable moved with his family to Northampton Massachusetts. 2002
Pizer Donald and Earl N. Literary historians have said that Cable's treatment of racism in his fiction influenced the later work of William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren.

He lived there for the next thirty years then moved to Florida. Due to hostility against him after two 1885 essays encouraging racial equality and opposing Jim Crow Cable moved with his family to Northampton Massachusetts. He has been called "the most important southern artist working in the late 19th century as well as the first modern southern writer.