Edward P. Jones shines new light on a world we’ve only known in black and white: the pre Civil War American south.  But it’s not a grey light—not simply a story told from a point mid-spectrum—unbiased, politically correct, and all too expected.  If Jones knows of this banal color scale, claiming the dichotomy between black and white impossible (or irrelevant), he gives no such indication.  He doesn’t explain away slavery with excuses in varying shades of charcoal and ash.  Rather, we’re left discomfited, wondering if we ourselves can distinguish black from white, right from wrong, heroes from villains.  As the story progresses and we lose our ability to judge, so too do we lose our preconceived notions of the American slave trade.