When a peacock’s days are over, they’re over.

Oliver is precocious, black and gay. He reads Baudelaire, plays with his pet peacock, eats smoked oysters and fends off the maid Della Mae whenever she gets the ‘Nasties’. He lives in rural Michigan with two elderly ladies: the white, wealthy Etta and her devoted housekeeper, Harry, his aunt. When a psychic warlock named Maurice LeFleur comes to stay, however, promising to contact the ghost of Etta’s dead son, their eccentric household starts to fall apart.

First published in 1965, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this sparklingly witty debut novel is a radically hopeful vision of racial integration and sexual acceptance that was years ahead of its time.