"Crooked Letter Crooked Letter" by Tom Franklin

  With 23 people in our book club, we have to share the selected books.  So I had two days to read this book.  I had cleared my calendar so I could spend large amounts of time reading.  What a delight!
  I was intrigued from the opening sentence: "The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house".
   Rural Mississippi, in the 1970's.

The title: "M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, humpback, humpback, I." - the way that southern children are taught to spell Mississippi.
  Rural Mississippi is really important in this novel- the racial tension, the guns, and there are snakes.
  The cover is ominous, showing two boys who love to be together in spite of the differences in their social status- one black, one white.
  It is a story of guilt, loneliness, sacrifice, murder, mystery, intrigue.
  I loved it- more than anyone else in the book club.
I will talk about rating books in my next blog.