Books Set in North America, Mississippi, United States

The Girls in the Stilt House, by Kelly Mustian (2021)

Read:  September 18, 2024

4 Stars

Books Set in North America, Mississippi, United States

The Tilted World, by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly (2013)

This novel takes place in the fictional town of Hobnob Landing, Mississippi in 1927, during prohibition.  The town is located on the Mississippi River and is protected by levees, which are strained due to the heavy rains and high-water levels.

Young Dixie Clay lives with her husband in the outskirts of town.  She married young and soon found out that her handsome husband was not the man she thought he was.  Soon after their marriage, she discovered that he was a bootlegger with a violent side.  She perfected the recipe, and soon became known as making the best moonshine in the area.  She was able to command high prices for her alcohol, which her husband sells.

When two Federal revenue agents go missing, two more are sent out to find them.  One agent, Teddy Ingersoll, happens upon Dixie Clay and they begin a tentative friendship.  He was unaware that she was making moonshine.

This is set against the background of the great Mississippi flood, which decimated the South.  The town folk are preparing for the inevitable flood, and must decide whether to stay and sandbag the levees or breach the levees so that the City of New Orleans might be spared.

I enjoyed the first part of the book, but the last quarter seem a bit far fetched.

Read:  July 19, 2023

3.5 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States, Mississippi

A Spark of Light, by Jodi Picoult (2018)

 

I have read several novels by Jodi Picoult.  She selects often controversial topics and explores various sides of the issue without lecturing or telling the reader the “right” answer.  This book, that explores an abortion clinic is no exception.  What is unique about this novel is that it takes place in one day, but it told backwards, one hour at a time.  (We do learn the backstories of the characters as the layers of each person is slowly peeled back.)

 

As is true in many states, laws have been enacted that severely restrict a woman’s ability to procure a safe and legal abortion.  This novel takes place in the only such center available in Mississippi.  As soon becomes clear, the Center, as it is called, also provides a plethora of health and reproductive services for women.  This book was carefully researched and is grounded in fact from both sides of the issue.

 

The novel begins when a gunman enters the Center and begins shooting, immediately killing the receptionist.  The women in the Center at the time of the shooting are there for various reasons.  Wren is a 15-year old girl who talked her Aunt Bex into taking her there for birth control pills; Joy needed an abortion; and 68-year-old Olive was there for women’s health care.  Janine is a “spy”, pretending to need an abortion in the hopes that she can capture incriminating evidence “proving” that women are coerced into getting an abortion.

 

George, the gunman, had just learned that his daughter had an abortion and wants to take revenge on the Center.  As has happened throughout the country, there have been a number of shootings at women’s health clinics.  In the afterward to the book, the author provides a summary of much of her research.

 

This is one of Picoult’s best novels.

 

Read:  February 21, 2021

 

4 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States: Mississippi

Pale: A Novel, by Edward A. Farmer (2020)

In 1966, Bernice, a young Black woman whose husband has left her, moved to be closer to her brother, Floyd, who worked in the field at the Kern cotton plantation in Mississippi.  Bernice would work in the plantation house with another Black servant, Silva.  At the house, they would tend to old Mister and his younger, but vindictive wife, Missus.  Neither the old Mister nor his wife seem to care much for each other, or anyone else, for that matter.  Years ago, they lost their young daughter, Elizabeth, an event from which Missus never recovered.

Silva was a widow with two young sons.  One summer, Silva’s sons, Jesse and Fletcher, were hired to work in the field picking cotton.  Missus threw a tantrum when she saw Fletcher and forbid him from working on the property.  She sought out Jesse, however, and began a dangerous flirtation with him.  She convinced Jesse to write her love letters and instructed him what to write.  Bernice tried to warn Jesse, but Missus held a power over him.  And she was trying to get back at her husband, who fathered Fletcher.

Fletcher had plans to go leave Mississippi and obtain an education.  After his first year at school, Missus used the letters Jesse had written to blackmail him into returning to the plantation to work as a field hand.  She insists that being on the plantation is his home and where he belongs.

Dark and twisted secrets hold the servants and owners to the land.

Read:  September 3, 2020

4 Stars

Books Set in North America: American South and Canada

The Saints of Lost Things, by C.H. Lawler (2014)

This novel begins as Hurricane Betsy is about to hit the Louisiana coast in 1965.  Sammy Teague, the wealthy young son of a Louisiana planter, was about to leave the plantation and head back to college at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi. Instead, he is the sole member of his family left at home to keep an eye on the plantation.

Betsy Duplechain lives across the field in the plantation’s tenement house where she lives with her mother and grandmother. She, too, is left alone in the house to sit out the storm.  Although Betsy and Sammy have lived on the same plantation all their lives, until the hurricane, their lives never intersected.

After the first wave of the storm hits, Sammy sees Betsy struggling at her home.  The storm has caused damage to the little hut.  Sammy invites Betsy to wait out the storm with him in the main house.  They are immediately attracted to each other and become inseperable.  After the storm, when their families return to the plantation, Sammy and Betsy’s lives are changed forever.

When Sammy’s family learns of his attraction to Betsy, he is cut-off financially.  He can no longer afford his college life-style.  Because he is no longer a college student, he no longer has the draft deferment.  He can either enlist or head to Canada.

When Betsy’s mother learns she is pregnant, Betsy is disowned and kicked out of the house.  She, thinking that Sammy is in college in Oxford, heads there to find him.

In the meantime, the Deputy Sheriff of the fictional St. Matthew’s Parish, Louisiana, feels that the Teague family had stolen his family’s land.  He decides Hurricane Betsy provides him with the best opportunity to get his land back if only he can get to Sammy.  This is where the story goes off the rails.  The deputy is depicted as a stereotypical corrupt and cruel country law enforcement officer.  He schemes to follow Sammy and Betsy through their travels.

Eventually, Betsy and Sammy find each other.  They decide to head towards Canada.  On the way, they stop in Arkansas, where they are married by a kindly and psychic priest.  The priest warns that that the sheriff is following them and assists in providing a way to their destination.

Much of the story didn’t make logical sense. It was an interesting read, but not one that will remain with me.

Read: April 26, 2019

3 Stars 

Books Set in the United States: Mississippi

Sycamore Row, by John Grisham (2013)

3 Stars

Read: April 3, 2015