The Mushroom Eater

An elderly Mexican plantation owner finds a young black boy in the jungle and raises him as one of his own children. Though his two older children dislike the boy, the younger daughter grows close to him, and, as they mature, the two fall in love. They also take to a black panther chained in the courtyard that their mother hates. She tries to have an affair with her adopted son. But he repels her, and she runs off only to be killed by the panther which has mysteriously gotten loose. The father decides he wants no interracial love affairs in his household and relegates the boy to a position of mushroom taster. If the boy eats a poisoned mushroom he will die and the ...