In the 1970s Larry Ott, also known as “Scary Larry” to the residents of his small Mississippi town, was accused of raping and murdering a local girl after taking her out on a date and returning home without her. Because no evidence or body was ever found to convict him, Larry was never charged with the murder but has had to live with the stigma all these years. Larry, a working class white man, is somewhat asocial and was considered strange even before the disappearance of the girl, and is now ostracized by the community. Now, many years later, another local girl has gone missing and Larry is the prime suspect. The small town is also home to the African-American constable, Silas Jones, who was once a boyhood friend of Scary Larry. Silas fled the small town after high school to play college ball but eventually returned to Mississippi, not having been able to forget the years and memories he collected there. Now estranged, the two men will come together over the unlikely circumstances surrounding the missing girl’s whereabouts, and the past between Silas and Larry will be uncovered for the whole community to witness. Both tense and perfectly paced, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a masterpiece of suspense that sheds its secrets in onion-like layers as the story weaves between the present and the past.One of the things I liked best about this story was how atmospheric and evocative it was. I could feel the damp heat of the small Mississippi town and hear the insects buzzing around the characters’ ears as I read, and I felt that Franklin did a lot to pull his readers into the story with his descriptive prowess. As the narrative moved forward, I began to see the town’s insolvency and corrosion as physical forces in the story, and from the first, it was these things that made indelible marks upon my mind as I read and experienced the tale that Franklin so expertly tells. He also used a technique that I found very effective, which was that his sentence style was abbreviated, giving the story a conversational and convivial feeling despite the dark undercurrents of the narrative.
As Silas Jones, nicknamed “32,” goes about his business as constable, there was an undercurrent to his observations of the town. He and the others in his community are living in a dead-end town, and they all know it. Silas does his best to keep his memories about Larry out of his mind, but as things begin to escalate and Larry is put into danger, Silas begins to display some strange regard for this man and his property. Since not much is revealed about the history between the two at this point in the book, I began to speculate over what had gone on between them and why Silas went out of his way to ignore Larry yet still harbored curiosity and concern for him. As things progressed, I began to see that the altruistic Silas was not who I thought he was, and that the secrets he kept had more to do with protecting his image and status than being malicious.
Though he was a little strange and asocial, for most of the book I felt sorry for Larry because, for one reason or another, he was always the underdog and was constantly being slighted, maltreated and teased. It was heartbreaking to consider the realities of Larry’s existence, and what made it worse was that he was so trusting and naïve. Larry had a tough row to hoe because when he was growing up he was very lonely and was ignored by the other white children around him. This was why he eventually made a bid for Silas’ friendship. Larry also had to deal with a father who was cold and unresponsive and who could be very cruel to the boy. When Larry’s father uses his ire to separate Silas and Larry, the boys, once friends, become combatants. Larry’s life only gets more complicated after his date goes missing and he takes on the town’s hatred.
There was a lot of chronicling of racial prejudice in this book and the n-word was used liberally. These scenes, uncensored as they were, were hard to read and digest, and they made me a little uncomfortable, but they did give the story plausibility and credibility. Franklin’s style of writing was very evocative and beautiful while still being tense and suspenseful. Though there was not a lot of mystery to the identity of the kidnapper and murderer of the second girl, the fact that Franklin balanced what amounted to two suspense plot lines in addition to the story of Larry and Silas’ past really impressed me. It was the kind of story that kept me pushing through the pages, and this was not only because the story was compelling, but because Franklin uses his ability to craft narrative and dialogue expertly. The book provoked a lot of uncomfortable emotions in me, and in Franklin’s vacillation between the past and the present there was regret, sorrow and shame, but ultimately, hope as well.
This was not your typical suspense/thriller, and though it had all the components of books of that genre, it was far more literary and dense. There has been a lot said about this book, and I’m not sure if I’ve added anything new to the discussion, but I will echo others and say this was an extremely worthy read and one that shouldn’t be missed. Franklin does an excellent job not only with his characters, but with the braiding of the stories he creates. An excellent and compelling read. Recommended.
About the AuthorTom Franklin is the author of Poachers, Hell at the Breech and Smonk. Winner of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, he teaches in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program and lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly, and their children. |
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A warm thanks to TLC Book Tours for providing this book for me to read and review. Please continue to follow the tour by visiting these other blogs:
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This book was provided as a complimentary review copy.
In a small Nebraska town, news is being made. The whole town is alight with excitement over being the chosen location to print and publish the last in the series of one of the most popular and premiere children’s books of the century, with everyone atwitter over just how it will all turn out. As the resident obituary writer in the town, Essie Myles is no stranger to strange and unusual circumstances, but when a young girl named Lenore goes missing, the situation gets more and more odd. It seems the town is not entirely convinced that little Lenore even existed, let alone has gone missing, and when her mother Daisy can’t produce the evidence that the town so desperately needs in order to begin searching for the young girl, Essie takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of things. Meanwhile, Essie’s thirteen year old great-granddaughter, Tiff, is going through a difficult time due to the reappearance of her mother after several years of abandonment, and Essie’s grandson Doc is strangling under the weight of his job as the editor of the local paper. Is Lenore really only a figment in the imagination of a woman seeking attention, or is there more to the story? And what will become of Essie and her brood as the foundations of their family are realigned and resituated? These are the questions that underpin the strangely melodious tale of The Coffins of Little Hope, the witty and intriguing new novel from Timothy Schaffert.
When 13 year old William Shepard stabs his stepfather in the side with an ivory handled pocket knife after trying to protect his mother from his brutal abuse, he is quickly sent off to Swope Ranch Boys’ Reformatory in the remote hills of Colorado for a stint of two years. Even though Will’s stepfather ends up surviving, the punishment for the boy is swift and severe. Though the facility is ostensibly a place for juvenile delinquents to do correctional time, the boys who live at the ranch are also responsible to care for and break the wild mustangs that are caught in the hills for eventual sale to other ranches. As William soon discovers, life at the ranch is always precarious and sometimes brutal, not only due to the attitudes of the inmates but also due to the power plays and aggressive behavior of the guards and wardens. Although his new life is harsh, William soon forms a small group of friends, and as they fulfill their sentences day by violent day, the boys become closer than brothers. When one by one the other boys begin to fall prey to horrible incidents, Will’s heart begins to break and he must hold on to himself and his sanity as life around him swirls into a maelstrom of violence, hatred and vengeance. In this debut by David E. Hilton, the terror and senseless atrocities of a boys’ correctional facility is rendered in flawless and stark detail, sharing the tale of Will and his ragtag band of friends.
Bess Gray is a thirty-something folklorist living in Washington, D.C. Though she has a great career and the love and support of good friends and family, what Bess really hungers for is a serious relationship that will one day lead to marriage and a family. Through the urging of a friend, she decides to throw a singles mixer in her large apartment one evening, inviting a group of random strangers over to find a potential mate. It’s on this evening that she meets Rory, a handsome Irish expatriate who plays the fiddle and is disarmingly funny. Before Bess really realizes what’s happening, Rory is a main fixture in her life and the two are inching their way towards the kind of commitment Bess craves. But Rory has a secret, because although he seems to be the perfect man, he has actually been married eight times previously. When he finally comes clean to Bess about this, their relationship goes from harmonious to troubled in the blink of an eye.
About the Author
When Prince Camillo Borghese meets Napoleon's sister Pauline, he is at once mesmerized and intrigued, but although he is considering marriage, Pauline is not the woman he would choose. After hearing rumors of her scandalous behavior, Camillo decides against Pauline, but when he one day spies her unaware, he realizes that she is a beautiful woman that he could one day love and decides to marry her and make her a princess. Pauline brings to the marriage one young son named Dermide and a young girl named Sophie who has been placed in Pauline’s care by her brother Napoleon. As Camillo and Pauline begin their marriage, things are almost immediately rocky between them, for Pauline doesn’t wish to conduct herself in a ladylike manner and begins having affairs with several other suitors, a fact she doesn’t hide from her husband. Aside from this, Pauline also spends extravagantly and often neglects her son and her charge, spending countless hours doing what pleases her. All these things lead Camillo into a dance of betrayal and forgiveness that spans several years of their marriage. Sophie also is having difficulty with Pauline, for although she idolizes and loves her, Pauline neglects her and uses her as a pawn in her power struggles with Camillo. In this historical fiction debut, readers come face to face with the manipulative and selfish Pauline Borghese, a princess who only looks out for herself, no matter what the consequences are.
Irene and Gary are in a failing relationship. Though things seems civil on the surface, Irene is convinced that this is the last winter that the couple will spend together, sure that Gary will leave her. When Gary decides to build a cabin on Caribou Island, he enlists Irene’s help, but all the couple seem to do is snipe at each other more and more aggressively. Meanwhile, Gary and Irene’s adult daughter Rhoda is hoping to receive a marriage proposal from Jim, her long term boyfriend. But Jim isn’t all that thrilled about settling down with Rhoda and thinks perhaps he can do better. Irene and Gary also have a grown son named Mark, who is basically a shiftless pothead who wants very little to do with the rest of his family and whose prospects have gradually dwindled. When a new couple of Mark’s acquaintance starts hanging around, the woman of the couple, Monique, a manipulative twenty-something, begins to dangerously tempt Rhoda’s boyfriend Jim, a situation that Rhoda is oblivious to. After a particularly grueling day spent building the cabin, Irene seems to have developed a chronic and severe headache that she just can’t shake. After several medical tests reveal nothing, her family is left doubting whether there is anything wrong with her at all or if this is just an attempt to get attention from her fumbling husband. As the misshapen cabin grows, things begin to take a sinister turn in the couple’s marriage, leading to an act of bizarre and frightening violence from which the family will never recover. Bleak and caustic, Caribou Island presents a slice of the life of one family whose dysfunction and apathy will reverberate through all the lives they touch.
Cephalopods, a group of animals that include octopuses and squid, may be some of the oldest creatures in the known world and can vary in size from a fraction of an inch to hundreds of pounds. In this wonderful exploration of one of the sea’s most mysterious class of creatures, Wendy Williams explores the strange and unique aspects of the cephalopod and explains why this odd creature may have done more for the advancement of medical science than any other animal in the world. She shares the reasons people are so squeamish when it comes to this animal and the unique way they display intelligence that scientists are only now beginning to discover and tap into. Drawing upon research that stretches back hundreds of years, Williams shares the common misconceptions that have hounded squid and octopuses from their earliest days and delights her audience with the weird and wholly unexpected reality and astounding facts about the cephalopods that abundantly fill Earth’s oceans.
Patsy Harman has led a very unusual life. In her twenties and thirties, she lived in the backwoods of Appalachia with her lover Stacy and their young son Mica. As self-proclaimed hippies, Patsy and her band of friends eat organically, protest environmental pollution and attend demonstrations against the Vietnam war. Living out in the deep woods of Minnesota, the small family lives simply, without electricity, indoor plumbing or running water. They grow and tend a subsidence garden and fill the chinks in their cabin by hand. But life out in the wilderness away from everyone eventually proves too hard for Patsy, so she leaves her son and lover on the homestead and begins to travel. When she finally ends up living in an intended community, Patsy finds that she’s far happier and falls in love with Tom, one of the community’s residents.
It’s a world much like our own, but here in this world of unimaginable bleakness, young men and women meet their deaths much too soon. For the women of this world, the age of expiration is twenty, while the males only garner four years more. Humankind has eradicated all the most deadly diseases, and the first generation lives on and on in uninterrupted health. But when they discover that their children are dying of a dreaded virus just after entering adulthood, the world takes on a sinister and horrific cast. Living in this desolate place is Rhine, a sixteen year old girl who, with her twin brother, is living a hand-to-mouth life after their parents, who were first generations, die unexpectedly. Rhine has heard the story of the Gatherers, men who steal young women and turn them over to wealthy families to be breeding machines until their early deaths. Though she has taken precautions to avoid being snatched, one day she’s tricked into a van and taken away.
In this introspective and witty memoir, Anthony Youn, a young Korean doctor, shares the passage of his life from early childhood and adolescence to his frantic foray through medical school, culminating in his residency in plastic surgery. Though Anthony is a smart youngster and a dedicated student, he’s not very popular with his classmates during his formative years. Adding to this problem is the unending pressure from his father, a Korean immigrant who has become a successful obstetrician. After graduating high school at the top of his class, Anthony decides to go on to medical school at the urgings of his father. Despite the fact that he’s not sure he wants to be a surgeon or doctor, Anthony does exceedingly well in medical school and is also able to make a handful of cherished friends who go through the ups and downs together with him.
When librarian Esther Hammerhans decides to rent out her box room to a boarder, she’s horrified to discover a huge black dog at her door inquiring about the vacancy. But this dog is like none other, for he can speak eloquently and wryly, and seems to have an uncanny way of getting into Esther’s subconscious. Though renting to this absurd creature is the furthest thing from her mind, the dog, known as Black Pat, is soon in residence, and Esther’s life is slowly spiraling into melancholy.
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