The Systems of Dante's Hell û an adaptation and manipulation of Dante's Inferno. Naylor has turned DanteÆs tale to her own fictional purposes, for surely Dante did not have in mind a tale of lost black souls trapped in the American dream. Naylor has created for the setting of her allegory the community for which the book is named: Linden Hills, an upper-middle-class black community built on a huge plot of land that seems to be somewhere in the middle of Middle America owned by the mysterious Nedeed family.
In the beginning sections of the book, Naylor tells us a good deal about the history of this piece of land û details necessary if we are to understand and appreciate the rest of the allegory. Purchased by Luther Nedeed in 1820 - after he had sold his octoroon wife and six children into slavery and moved from Tupelo, Mississippi, to the brave new world of Linden Hills, the land has remained under the proprietorship of the Nedeeds for more than 150 years. All the males in the Nedeed family are named Luther û which the reader is no doubt supposed to read as
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