What is crooked letter

After the funeral we ended up back at grandmother's for a meal. The women stayed out in the kitchen except for when they were bringing more food around or filling up my ice tea. I swear my ice tea never got more than inch down from the rim.

The men asked me questions. One thing they were really concerned about was how the South was perceived by a Yankee such as myself. I trotted out my bona fide that my gg grandfather Keeten was a Confederate soldier from Virginia. To people in Mississippi Virginia is Northern , so that bought me barely a dollop of legitimacy. My wife had warned me not to be outspoken politically. These weren't blue dog Democrats, but deep red Mississippi mud Republicans, and so I skated over the issues that I knew would cause a ruckus.

They insisted to me how much Mississippi had changed, as if I were an ambassador from the North, and would go home and tell everyone that the South has become progressive. I agree, no doubt, the South had progressed in the last years. The people were super. Everyone I met was sincere and every sentence was scented with Southern charm, but two different funeral homes tells me that the South still has some wrinkles that need smoothed out.

I loved my time down there and can't wait to take a family vacation through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. I know, I know I'm supposed to be writing a book review not reminiscing. There is something about reading books set in the South that makes me want to tell stories. In junior high I was the kid that ordered too many books from Scholastic. I can still feel the shame reddening my neck and my cheeks as I walked up to the teacher's desk to get my book stack that was larger than the rest of the class put together.

I was only someone's best friend when they needed help with their homework. So I did identify with the feelings of ostracization that Larry Ott was feeling in this novel. I was undersized too, one of the smallest guys in my class. I wore glasses and scurried around like a rabbit between classes. Small towns are tough and small schools are even tougher. There is no escape. In big schools you can blend in better, and also with a larger population you increase your chances in finding a "freak" like yourself.

When people extol the virtues of their small school system I always think to myself they're great if your kid is designated normal.

Larry Ott gets accused of a crime, a girl is missing. He is in the frame. People aren't accusing him just because he is weird. Circumstantial evidence does make him a legitimate suspect.

The problem is when he is cleared of all charges the town does not forget. Another person, maybe a person that sat at the "cool kids" table could have moved on with their lives with only a passing reference to the unfortunate circumstances. Not Larry, not Scary Larry. Unfortunately for Larry the people of his small town America did not like him.

He had been weighed and measured and found to be too weird. When another girl goes missing Larry is the number one suspect because what lingers in everyone's mind is the unfinished business from the first missing girl. Sympathy for his plight is not offered.

He is, as he has been his whole life, alone. Silas "32" Jones is the closest Larry ever had to a friend. Their lives are entwined in a way that neither boy is fully aware of, yet there are phantom ghosts of information at the periphery of their consciousness that as more facts are revealed they don't question the results.

They realize they've always known. When Larry lends Silas a rifle Silas becomes his friend for a short while. Silas likes the stories that Larry tells him from the pages of Stephen King, but refuses to even try to read a book. It is too much like school work. When Silas becomes a star short stop, known as 32 by everyone, Larry is just an embarrassment to him. Silas will look back with more than a little regret that he didn't lay a friendly hand on Larry's shoulder or ask him to join in social activities.

He was uniquely positioned to change Larry's life forever. His gift of athleticism empowered him to bring Larry into the social group.

His offer of friendship would have forced people to see Larry differently. By some quirk of fate I started growing. By the time I got to high school I had evolved from being one of the shortest people in my class to being the tallest person in my class.

As it turned out I was coordinated enough to play sports and did well. Like Silas, when people would see me in the local diner or on the street or in the hallway they would call out my jersey number, The people I needed so desperately when I was so lonely all of a sudden were my "best friends". It was simply ridiculous. I can score twenty points in a basketball game, and miraculously I am cured of being the number one class freak.

Growing up I was Silas and Larry. I understand all too well their fallacies and their insecurities. I felt Larry's burning shame as if my own cheeks were inflamed. I felt Silas's guilt as if it were resting on my own shoulders. Franklin keyed into elements that I have given a lot of thought to. I can tell from reading other reviews that this book had a profound impact on people.

It certainly made me plow over old ground. My one complaint is that I feel that Franklin could have put more meat on the bone. It does not have the complexity of a book that I could wholeheartedly agree is a modern classic.

I really enjoyed another book by Franklin called Hell at the Breech. Gorgeous and dripping with emotion and ache That I connected so well with both the story and its main character surprised me because, being born and raised in Vegas, my own life experience is so vastly different from both Larry and the town of Chabot, Mississippi, where the story takes place.

The reason for the above two parentheticals is that Larry is the town pariah. While Larry was never arrested or formally accused of a crime, his reputation as the weird, horror book reading loner was enough to earn him a guilty verdict and a permanent shunning from the town.

Larry feels this isolation down in his bones and Franklin casual, matter of fact description of it sliced right through me. Now Larry spends his days working in a shop with no customers, living alone with his chickens and having no visitors except for i drunk teenagers throwing bottles at his house and ii the County Investigator, Roy French, harassing him whenever a crime occurs.

Beyonf that, Larry just sort of floats through the days, even treating his house as if he were only a guest. Silas was a high school baseball star with dreams of going pro until injury cut his prospects short. For a brief time in high school, Silas and Larry were friends. Silas is another damaged man with lots of baggage of his own.

Silas often regrets the way he and the town treat Larry, but has become trapped in his own circumstances and is too weak to change. I listened to the audiobook and by the time you hear his words they've already vaporized and settled onto your brain like a flower-scented mist of small time life.

His descriptions of Chabot and its slow, small town death are magical and precisely what they should be. There's also a whole supporting cast of interesting, well drawn southern folks who come across as varying shades of good and bad. In other words, normal people and Franklin's unobtrusive prose has you able to visualize each one after spending only a few minutes with them.

He did a tour in the army and went to the police academy when he got home and became the town constable. Now in their early 40s, Larry and Silas have not spoken to one another in 25 years. Readers are bound to fall in love with both of these men in this moving and heart-warming story about guilt and forgiveness. Become a RoundTable member today! I'm not interested. Stay connected to the community with daily or weekly updates in your inbox. Thank you, your sign-up request was successful!

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You're on the list. There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Woven through the tautly written mystery is the unspoken secret that hangs over the lives of two men - one black, one white. Sign up here. Ready for your next read? See more book details 31 July Tom Franklin's heart-tuggingly melancholic Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter was a standout slice of beautiful writing.

Superb dialogue, scuffed social realism and painterly description bring alive the Mississippi backwater where the tangled history between ostracised Larry Ott and popular police officer Silas Jones is exposed by the disappearance of a girl.