Tom Franklin

A prettily written, engaging and moving story about small towns, assumptions and the desire to have a simple answer rather than a right answer, the wages of racism, and the bone-deep need for community. Sometimes Franklin leans in too much to his points, making the Boo Radley character a little too christlike, the squirrelly rednecks a little too Deliverance, and the town's reactions to things a little too lockstep. For the most part though this was a beautifully crafted story. If you are looking for a murder mystery that is not really what this is. Franklin foreshadows hard, and when true stories are revealed about the fates of the missing girl and another who went missing 20 years before there are zero surprises. Read this as literary fiction and I expect you will be as delightfully satisfied as I was… (more)

Crooked Letter Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin is a gripping and extremely well written mystery novel.

The story is set in a small town in Mississippi where boyhood pals Larry Ott and Silas 32 attend school. Larry was the child of lower white class white parents and Silas the son of a poor, black single mother. Larry took a girl to a drive in movie and she was never seen o heard from again. He never confessed and was never charged. More than twenty years pass and another girl has disappeared, forcing two men who once called each other "friends" to contront a past they’ve buried for decades.

Firstly this Novel is so much more than a mystery/crime novel and once you start this book it really is very difficult to put down. The sense of place in this story is so well written and I could feel the small town and its people and hear the sounds and grip the language and accent.
The characters of Larry and Ott are what makes this novel so special, you really get to know them more with every chapter and more importantly care about the characters.

This is certainly a novel with a difference and I am so glad I have read it.… (more)

The Tilted Word is written by husband and wife team, author Tom Franklin and poet Beth Ann Fennelly. Set during the catastrophic 1927 flooding of the Mississippi this is a beautifully written story that includes murder, bootlegging and unexpected love.

Revenuers Ted Ingersoll and Ham Johnson arrive in Hobnob Landing with a mission to locate the local bootlegger and the murderer of the missing two revenuers that were last known to be in Hobnob. On the way, they unexpectedly find an abandoned baby at a crime scene. While Ham travels on, Ingersoll takes the baby and tries to find a family for him. He ends up coming on to Hobnob and placing the baby with Dixie Clay Holliver, little knowing that she is married to the bootlegger that they are searching for. On her part, Dixie Clay is living a life of mourning and regret. Mourning the baby she lost and regret over her marriage to the slimy, corrupt Jesse. Dixie falls in love with her new baby and she and Ingersoll bond over their concern and caring of the infant. While the romance is slow and gentle, both the tension and the river continue to rise.

The Tilted World is a gripping story and one in which the reader cannot help but root for Dixie Clay and Ingersoll to not only find each other, but save the baby and themselves from the devastating flood. Considering that there were two authors, the story is smoothly knit together and 1927 rural Mississippi comes alive on these pages.… (more)