Go Down, Moses is a 1942 collection of seven related pieces of short fiction by American author William Faulkner, sometimes considered a novel.

But this is not the first time this has happened and Uncle Buck and Buddy know where he always goes, to Hubert Beauchamp's neighboring plantation to see his love, a slave girl named Tennie.

If Buck loses, he is to marry Sophonsiba and must agree to buy the slave girl Tennie so Turl will stop running away to see her.

Uncle Buck and Sophonsiba Beauchamp eventually marry and become the parents of Isaac McCaslin, the central character who serves to unify most of the stories in the novel.

When Hubert and Buck are taking bets on where Tomey's Turl will show up, the reader further sees how far removed from human the slaves are in the eyes of the owners.

Tomey's Turl eludes McCaslin and Uncle Buck, who are forced to rely on the leisurely Hubert Beauchamp for help.

They are forced to eat dinner with Beauchamp and his sister Sophonsiba, "Sibbey", who is looking for a husband and has Uncle Buck in mind.

Hubert and Buck search through the woods for Turl and make a 500-dollar bet over whether he will be caught outside Tennie's cabin that night.

They spend a great deal of time hammering out the stakes, but in the end, Beauchamp folds, and Buddy wins the game.

Faulkner's technique in Go Down, Moses is to present stories whose full significance in the overall history of his characters is not apparent until later in the book.

Faulkner incorporates into the McCaslin family many of the characteristics he viewed as essential to an understanding of the South as a whole, including the painful racial divide between whites and blacks that defined Southern history in the decades before and after the Civil War.

On its own terms, "Was" is a brilliant set-piece, a probing look at the past and a handy opportunity for Faulkner to establish some of the important McCaslins—Buck and Buddy, the old bachelor twins, and the young McCaslin Edmonds.

Isaac McCaslin will prove to be the central character in Go Down, Moses, and Faulkner helps build his stature in the reader's mind by introducing him in advance in the first two stories of the book.

Also, Lucas' daughter is being pursued for marriage, despite her father's wishes, by a poor black man, George Wilkins.

Roth calls the authorities, but they arrive just as Wilkins has put large jugs of whiskey on Lucas' porch and as his daughter hides the still in his own backyard.

Lucas returns to the plantation and cons a salesman out of a metal detector to search for the treasure he adamantly believes exists.

[citation needed] Rider, an incredibly strong and large black man who lives on Carothers "Roth" Edmonds' plantation, is bereaved by the death of his wife.

He returns to work at a sawmill the next day, but after chucking an incredibly large log down a hill, walks off the job and buys a jug of whiskey, drinking copiously.

Rider goes to the tool room at the mill and confronts a man named Birdsong, who has been cheating black men in dice for years.

In the forest, Sam Fathers, the son of a Chickasaw chief and a black slave-girl, teaches Isaac McCaslin how to hunt.

At last they find a dog capable of bringing Old Ben to bay: Lion, a huge, wild Airedale Terrier mix with extraordinary courage and savagery.

General Compson declares that he wants Isaac to ride Kate, the only mule who is not afraid of wild animals and, therefore, the best chance any of the men have to get close enough to the bear to kill him.

McCaslin tries to convince him to accept the land, with a convoluted metaphysical argument about the fated responsibilities the white race has taken on.

He travels to Arkansas to give a thousand dollars to Lucas' sister, Fonsiba, now married to a scholarly negro farmer, who seems to neglect both his farm and wife.

Along the way they discuss the worsening situation in Europe, with Roth taking the cynic's view against Ike's idealism.

Ike, ashamed of acting as a go-between in such a sordid matter, informs her that Roth has left and tries to thrust the money on her.

A well-dressed and well-spoken young black man identifies himself as Samuel Beauchamp, a native of Yoknapatawpha County.

Without quite understanding why, he donates and collects enough money to bring the young man's body home for a proper funeral.

Its real importance lies in the fresh perspective it provides through Gavin Stevens, an educated and worldly man of the 20th century who would eventually become a key figure in Faulkner's later fiction.

He is, however, capable of change; at the story's end he experiences an epiphany when he learns that Mollie wants the funeral to be covered in the local newspaper "just like anyone else's".