Title: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Author: Tom Franklin
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: May 17, 2011
Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0060594671
Genre: Fiction, Mystery

From the Publisher:

In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32″ Jones were boyhood pals in a small town in rural Mississippi. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry was the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, black single mother. But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed . . . and was never charged.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary, shunned existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has become the town constable. And now another girl has disappeared, forcing two men who once called each other “friend” to confront a past they’ve buried for decades.

My Review:

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin is a dramatic story with a mystery backdrop about a brief, but important friendship, a person gone missing in rural Mississippi and the long-since unanswered questions about who was responsible.  The story spans two decades, alternating in time between the time in which Larry is suspected in the disappearance of a girl following their date and a second tragic disappearance some 20 years later.  Franklin crafts an extraordinarily vivid scene along with excellent character descriptions that lay the foundation for what turns out to be a story of suspicion, guilt, friendships lost and reconciliation.   Readers will feel as though they know the two main characters, Larry and Silas, good friends from decidedly different backgrounds who ultimately must face the very questions that drove them apart as young boys.  In expert fashion, Franklin through his knack for literary imagery, provides readers with a story that is far more than a mystery because the story is captivating in many ways as it touches upon the many emotions that are associated with race relations, socioeconomic differences in the South, friendships, and trust.  Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter would make for an excellent discussion group pick and I recommend this novel to all readers.

About the Author:

Tom Franklin is the author of Poachers, Hell at the Breech, and Smonk. Winner of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, he teaches in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program and lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly, and their children.

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I received an copy of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.