Amazon.com description: Product Description: 1929. Heyward's first novel Porgy was an immediate success. He started his literary career with short stories of Negro life in his native South and his novel Mamba's Daughters returns to that theme. The book begins: It was no mere chance that, during the first decade of the new century, brought Mamba out of the darkness of the underworld into the light of the Wentworths' kitchen. Casual as that event seemed, there is good evidence for the belief that it had its origin in some obscure recess of the woman's mind; or in perhaps some deep and but half comprehended instinct that drove her, against the reasoning of her brain, to embark upon what must have seemed a fantastically hopeless venture. For Mamba had arrived at an age that lay on the downhill side of fifty, and her habitat had always been the waterfront. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.