The book is set in the 1830s in the Antebellum South primarily around Falconhurst, a fictional plantation in Alabama owned by the planter Warren Maxwell.

Mandingo is a tale of cruelty toward the black people of that time and place, detailing the overwhelmingly dehumanizing behavior meted out to the slaves, as well as vicious fights, poisoning, and violent death.

Onstott was a lifelong bachelor, but at age 40, he chose to adopt a 23-year-old college student, Philip, who had lost his own parents.

[7] Mandingo takes place in 1832 on the fictional plantation Falconhurst, located close to Tombigbee River near Benson, Alabama.

Although Hammond keeps a "bed-wench" for sexual satisfaction, his father wishes him to marry and produce a pure white heir.

When the other men in the group explain this to Hammond, he is physically repulsed and denies that a white woman would ever willingly sleep with a black slave.

When Hammond finds out, he calmly asks the doctor for some poison, mixes it in a hot toddy, and gives it to Blanche, killing her.

In Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History, Gregory Smithers traces the history of coercive reproductive and sexual practices in the Antebellum South, as well as reactions and denials of the practice of slave breeding by historians throughout the twentieth century.

In the novel, Warren Maxwell, owner of the Falconhurst plantation, reiterates time and again that cotton is not a reliable crop and the real money is in breeding "niggers".

Onstott even comments on this in a Newsweek article about Mandingo: "I've always felt that the human race could be regenerated by selective breeding.

The white men in Mandingo take for granted their entitlement to sleep with female slaves, and offering a "bed wench" to a (male) guest is part of the code of southern hospitality.

As pointed out above, Hammond is shocked when he sees Charles and Katy kiss on the lips: "It was disgust, bordering upon nausea, that a white man should assume an amatory equality with a Negro wench.

"[14] Blanche's anger at Hammond and jealousy of Ellen grow throughout the final third of the book until she retaliates by sleeping with the Mandingo slave, Mede.

The cultural taboo of white women having sex with black male slaves in Mandingo is filtered through the mind and experiences of Hammond Maxwell.

'"[15] When he comes to accept the obvious, he becomes physically ill: "He lay awake, obsessed and horrified by the fantasy of the German woman in the black man's arms.

Hammond sees Mede wearing the earrings as Blanche's silly form of revenge and it amuses him: "...but that there was more to the story never entered his imagination.

"[18] The calmness with which Hammond poisons Blanche and then gruesomely murders Mede by boiling him alive in a kettle reveals that, at least in the world of Mandingo, for a white lady to sleep with a black man was beyond taboo; it was a crime against nature so ghastly that immediate death for both parties was the only possible consequence.

Bargainnier explains, "These unattractive representations of southern white women as sexually insatiable and totally unfaithful...are also meant to destroy the earlier image of the chaste and delicate plantation belle of Thomas Nelson Page and numerous other authors of moonlight and magnolias fiction.

"[19] Tim A. Ryan echoes this statement, writing, "Kyle Onstott's sensationalist Mandingo (1957) turns the myth of Tara on its head with unashamed vulgarity.

"[21] That Onstott so thoroughly skewered these beloved beliefs of those who glamorized the Antebellum South shows how radical a novel Mandingo was, despite its flaws.

Although Mandingo was a national and international best-seller, selling 5 million copies nationwide,[22] critical opinions about the novel were—and continue to be—mixed.

"[25] Van Deburg's use of the word "reveled" suggests that the authors of the Falconhurst series wrote mainly to titillate the audience rather than to criticize the culture of American slavery.

[26] In a 1967 New York Times article about American books published in France, Jacques Cabau refers to Mandingo as "a sort of Uncle Sade's Cabin that reflects less on racism than on its readers' perversion.

"[27] Eliot Fremont-Smith, a New York Times critic, mocked the Falconhurst series by using them as a litmus test for other "bad" fiction: "I am compelled to name the absolute worst, most regurgitory new-and-advertised book that I've read in 1975, the one most deserving of the Kyle Onstott Memorial Award..."[28] Such critical reactions show a disgust at the atrocities portrayed in Onstott's novel.

"[30] Nearly all critics were quick to point out the "morbid, revolting, interesting, sadistic..."[31] nature of the content while also accepting Onstott's vision of the Antebellum South as accurate: "...it carries with it the power of absolute conviction, and this quality may demand that we revise our notions of American history, for it confounds us with the evils of our past.

[citation needed] A play based on the novel and written by Jack Kirkland opened at the Lyceum Theater in New York in May, 1961, with Franchot Tone and Dennis Hopper in the cast; it ran for only eight performances.

[34] Mandingo was followed by several sequels over the next three decades, some of which were co-written by Onstott with Lance Horner and in later years written by Harry Whittington under the pseudonym "Ashley Carter".