Larry Ott is a lonely man. He lives his life in rural Mississippi in the family’s home all alone. Amongst his dead father’s favorite chair and his forgetful mother’s knick-knacks, he sits and reads his horror books, keeping the place clean although he never has company.
It seems as if Larry’s forty-one years have always been filled with loneliness. Being one of the only whites in his 70’s integrated schools, he remembers the nice things said to him by fellow classmates because it rarely happened.
Things were not any easier when his father was alive either. Larry’s natural talent for reading always put him at odds with the man known for his baseball abilities. Forget trying to help him at the garage where essential wing nuts seemed to fly from his sweaty hands. The best he could do for the family business was to keep the bays clean and the oil canisters filled.
Then there was the thing that happened 25 years ago. The one thing that makes him suffer the most. The reason boys taunt him late at night by tearing up the yard in their 4-wheel drives throwing beer bottles at the house. The motivation Chief Investigator Roy French uses to enter his home and search the property.
See, Larry is what law enforcement likes to call a person of interest. Some 25 years ago, Cindy Walker went missing. The last person to see her was Larry. She went to the drive-in-movie and just walked away from their date.
The nightmare is happening again. The Rutherford girl has been missing eight days and all eyes are on Larry. It does not help that the one friend he had growing up has moved back to the town but refuses to return Larry’s phone messages.
So begins Tom Franklin’s fourth novel titled, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Franklin currently teaches at the University of Mississippi where he lives with his poet wife, Beth Ann Fennelly.
I first heard of Mr. Franklin through my preacher’s wife while he was the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss. Back in 2002 he was working on a little book and she was uncertain of his choice of careers. That book was Hell at the Breech and I do believe he has found his calling.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (copy)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Past is Never Dead (copy)
Two inhumane murders happened in 1964 and nothing was done. Suspects were brought in for questioning and still nothing was done. Time passed, years slipped away, and then Connie Chung came looking for cold cases in Mississippi.
Chung had earlier success with the unsolved murder of Ben Chester White. Three men walked free from the murder in 1966. “Jack Jones, who watched the killing, was never charged; Claude Fuller, who pumped over ten bullets into White, was let go after his trail resulted in a hung jury; and Ernest Avants, who confessed twice to lawmen to shooting White’s head off with a shotgun, was acquitted in state court.”
Digging through old court records in the basement of the Natchez Historical Society, Chung and film producer Harry Phillips found the transcripts of Avants’ trial. Reading through they quickly discovered an overlook fact. The crimes happened in Homochitto National Forest making this a federal not a state incident. These two non-lawyers stumbled upon obvious evidence to reopen the case.
Chung headed out to interview the last living suspect in White’s murder, Avants. She came face-to-face with a racist redneck who loved to brag about his past Klan activities. After the interview, Chung and Phillips told U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott about the overlooked jurisdiction and Avants was indicted at the age of sixty-nine.
The 1964 murders were different. Henry Dee and Charles Moore were killed a month after the three Civil Rights workers went missing in Neshoba County. When Moore’s partial body was discovered in the Mississippi River, the initial M on his belt buckle was falsely identified as belonging to Michael Schwerner.
Twenty-eight federal agents descended from the north to investigate the missing Civil Rights workers, but Dee and Moore were left alone as a mere local matter. In The Past is Never Dead, by Harry N. Maclean, they now have a national voice.
In the style of Truman Capote, Maclean writes a compelling true-crime that Mississippians will wince while reading. His negative portrayal of whites as all racist during the 60s can be irritating at the beginning of the book. Stay the course and the story opens up chapter after chapter to engross.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
I Remember Nothing (copy)
Nora Ephron’s done it again with her new book I Remember Nothing.” I loved her last, I Feel Bad about My Neck, and was a little leery of another book complaining about aging. Could she write about something else? Should she write about something else?
I almost fell out of my reading chair when she admitted her age near the end of the book. I had sat the book cover down and was looking at her face thinking she looked great for being in her early fifties. That was a joke! She is 69 and looks spectacular for her age.
In essence, she has earned the right to talk about old age and I should not criticize her for continually coming to the same trough. What I would like to see from her is a book about aging well, though. Her secrets need to be told!
Who cares if you cannot remember your sister’s name or recognize her when she greets you on a street corner? If one looks sassy and stylish they can pull off any odd encounter with grace. This is how I picture her from her article which shares the same title as the book.
Can you imagine not being able to recognize someone you see on a constant basis? In fairness, she was at a street corner in another city where the last person she expected to see was her sister.
It is crazy the famous people she has forgotten but the minutia she recalls on the same day as the meeting. Her first example is Eleanor Roosevelt. She was dying to meet Mrs. Roosevelt having idolized her as a child. A photo of her mother and Eleanor hung prominently in the family home and even today she can picture her mother wearing a corsage and the First Lady sporting pearls.
Ephron can visualize the trip taken to see her with interns from Wellesley and Vassar. She remembers the room in Hyde Park. She also remembers getting lost and the bad turn that started it all, but sadly she remembers nothing of the iconic lady.
As a young reporter, she was sent to cover the Beatles in 1964 as they embarked from the plane. She spent the whole weekend following their every move and writing her observations. She even stood back stage at the Ed Sullivan Show that Sunday night and recollects the obnoxious teenage girls all screaming. Ask her about the Beatles themselves though and she draws a blank.
It is scary the things one forgets, but Ephron makes it all fun while looking great at the same time.
