Let Me Breathe Thunder

2017 Reprint of 1939 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software.

William Attaway is best known for his novel Blood on the Forge (1941), a novel with Black characters about migration to the industrial North. Let Me Breathe Thunder shares many of the themes of proletarian struggle and economic determinism demonstrated in his later work.

Let Me Breathe Thunder is a simply told story of migrant workers on the road caught in a predetermined universe of tragic proportions. Naturalistic in style and execution, the novel emphasizes a psychological connection between the characters and their environment. The deceptively naïve qualities of the text mask complicated symbols of forces beyond the characters’ control.