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In this lucid exposition and analysis of David Bradley's award-winning novel, The Chaneysville Incident, the powerful motivation of John Washington, the hero of "mixed genetic heritage," in hearing and telling tales is linked to the internal struggles of Bradley, a Black writer in whom Gliserman identifies a "hero's quest for identity." John Washington confronts issues of racism both in its external and internal manifestations. Early in life he was apprenticed to a Black backwoodsman, and later emerged as a history professor, who is called to care for a dying childhood mentor who had been a father figure for him. Washington has been living with a white woman psychiatrist for five years and is confronted with issues of racial difference on a number of levels. When Washington discovers that his father's inadequately explained death was a suicide, he withdraws from his lover and becomes suicidal. Conflicts over rebellion and submission are prominent, and Gliserman gives particular attention to Washington's symptoms of belly pain, which appears to associated with "primitive rage." He also links this to fantasies of birth, "good" and "bad" breast, transitional objects, internalized objects, and oedipal conflict. In mourning for his childhood mentor, Washington finds release from multiple prohibitions and is able to experience love for Judith, the psychiatrist, on a deeper level. His transition from feelings of impotence and suicidal fantasies to powerful procreative motives gives evidence of profound psychological growth.