Deborah G. Plant is an African American and Africana Studies independent scholar, author of OF GREED AND GLORY: In Pursuit of Freedom for All, and literary critic specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston.

She is editor of the New York Times bestseller BARRACOON: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston and the author of ALICE WALKER: A Woman for Our Times, a philosophical biography. She is also editor of THE INSIDE LIGHT: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, and the author of ZORA NEALE HURSTON: A Biography of the Spirit and EVERY TUB MUST SIT ON ITS OWN BOTTOM: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston.

She holds MA and Ph. D. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Plant played an instrumental role in founding the University of South Florida’s Department of Africana Studies, where she chaired the department for five years. She presently resides in Florida.

Books by Deborah G. Plant

The Life of Herod the Great

written by Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Deborah G. Plant - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In the 1950s, as a continuation of MOSES, MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ --- a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea. An intimate of both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the Judean king lived during the first-century BCE, in a time of war and imperial expansion that was rife with political assassinations and bribery, as the old world gave way to the new. Portraying Herod within this vivid and dynamic world of antiquity, little known to modern readers, Hurston’s unfinished manuscript brings this complex, compelling and misunderstood leader fully into focus.