Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: A Novel (P.S.) [Kindle Edition]

Tom Franklin (Author)

Book Description

“The classic trifecta of talent, heart, and a bone-deep sense of storytelling….A masterful performance, deftly rendered and deeply satisfying. For days on end, I woke with this story on my mind.”
   — David Wroblewski

 

“A new Tom Franklin novel is always a reason to get excited, but Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is more—a cause for celebration. What a great novel by a great novelist.”
—Dennis Lehane

 

A powerful and resonant novel from Tom Franklin—critically acclaimed author of Smonk and  Hell at the Breech—Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter tells the riveting story of two boyhood friends, torn apart by circumstance, who are brought together again by a terrible crime in a small Mississippi town. An extraordinary novel that seamlessly blends elements of crime and Southern literary fiction, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a must for readers of Larry Brown, Pete Dexter, Ron Rash, and Dennis Lehane.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Product Description
Edgar Award-winning author Tom Franklin returns with his most accomplished and resonant novel so far—an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.

A Q&A with Author Tom Franklin

Q: Tell us a bit about your latest book Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. How did you come up with the title?

Franklin: Title's a pneumonic device used to teach children (mostly southern children) how to spell Mississippi. M, I, crooked-letter, crooked-letter, I, crooked-letter, crooked-letter, I, humpback, humback, I.

Q: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a bit of a departure from your previous two novels—Smonk and Hell at the Breech—in that it is set in contemporary times and the story line is a bit less dark. What inspired the premise for this novel and the departure from a more historical setting?

Franklin: I'd been wanting to write about a small town police officer, and I'd long had the image of a loner mechanic in my mind. When I put the two together, the story began to form. I used a lot of autobiographical stuff for Larry, the mechanic.

Q: A review in USA Today (for Hell at the Breech) stated that, “he also makes his characters rise up from the pages as if they were there with you.” …and this is certainly true in your latest novel. How do you approach the task of developing your characters and bringing them to life? Are the characters in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter based on anyone in particular?

Franklin: They're both a combination of different facets of different people, a conglomeration of fact and fiction. I usually try to just let them begin to do what they want to do, just put them in a situation and see what they do. When they begin to surprise me, do things I hadn't anticipated, that's when it's working.

But the character of Silas "32" Jones is very loosely based on the sole police officer of the hamlet of Dickinson, Alabama, where I grew up. This guy was actually the law in a nearby mill town, and my hamlet of Dickinson fell in his tiny jurisdiction. I've always loved the idea of small town cops, especially one who might be a kind of underdog to the police forces of nearby larger towns.

Q: In Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter your two main characters are anything but stereotypical—the young black boy goes off to college to play baseball and comes back to be the town constable and the young white boy is the accused murderer and the town outcast. What, if anything, prompted you to portray these characters this way?

Franklin: No real person is a stereotype, and I try to make my characters as real as I can. We're all a mess of contradictions and secrets, strangenesses and desires, and nobody's all good or all bad. We're all somewhere in the spectrum between absolute good and absolute evil. So I just try to find a character who's fairly normal, and put him or her in a fix and see how he or she negotiates it to see, as Kurt Vonnegut says, what he or she is made of. In this case, the story as I came to understand it called for Larry to stay home and Silas to leave. If it had been the other way around, I'd still work to make the characters unstereotypical.

Q: Without giving away too much of the story, what is one thing (emotion, thought) that readers can expect to walk away with after reading this book?

Franklin: It's a sad book, but it's full of hope. Hope is what I want a reader to leave with.

Q: Historically the South has not always had a positive image in other parts of the country. How has your experience growing up and living in the rural South shaped your talent as a writer? And have you ever felt the need to justify or redeem the South’s past in any of your works?

Franklin: I think growing up in the south made me the person I am, and the writer I am comes from that. So, yes, the south's made me the writer I am. It taught me to listen to the cadences and rhythms of speech, and to notice the landscape. It also has this defeated feel, a lingering of old sin, that makes it sweet in a rotting kind of way. Much of it is poor, much is rural, and that's an interesting combination, a deep well for stories.

Q: Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer? Who are some writers, past and present, that you admire or have inspired you?

Franklin: I always knew I wanted to tell stories, one way or another. If I'd had a video camera in the mid 1970s I'm sure I'd be a filmmaker now. But I just had a portable typewriter, and so the stories I could tell were ones on paper.

Q: You are one of the most celebrated writers in the field, and have been compared to the likes of Harper Lee, William Faulkner, and Elmore Leonard. What do you believe is the one thing that sets you apart from other contemporary writers in your genre?

Franklin: What sets me apart? I honestly don't know that I’m more "apart" from other writers of my generation. Landscape plays a large role in what I write, but that's true of many other writers. My stuff is set in the south, but that's true of others as well. I don't know, honestly.

Q: As a professor of English, what is one piece of advice that you would share with aspiring writers?

Franklin: Read, starting with the classics. Read all the time. If you don't read, you won't ever be a writer. Also, write. This seems obvious, but it's amazing how many "writers" don't write very much.

From Publishers Weekly

Franklin's third novel (after Smonk) is a meandering tale of an unlikely friendship marred by crime and racial strain in smalltown Mississippi. Silas Jones and Larry Ott have known each other since their late 1970s childhood when Silas lived with his mother in a cabin on land owned by Larry's father. At school they could barely acknowledge one another, Silas being black and Larry white, but they secretly formed a bond hunting, fishing, and just being boys in the woods. When a girl goes missing after going on a date with Larry, he is permanently marked as dangerous despite the lack of evidence linking him to her disappearance, and the two boys go their separate ways. Twenty-five years later, Silas is the local constable, and when another girl disappears, Larry, an auto mechanic with few customers and fewer friends, is once again a person of interest. The Southern atmosphere is rich, but while this novel has the makings of an engaging crime drama, the languid shifting from present to past, the tedious tangential yarns, and the heavy-handed reveal at the end generate far more fizz than pop.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• File Size: 468 KB
• Print Length: 292 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0060594667
• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (October 5, 2010)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003XDUCGS
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,808 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

162 of 166 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A work for the ages, an example of how the classic novel is properly written. October 13, 2010

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

I have been a fan of Tom Franklin's work since "Poachers," both the work of short fiction and the collection of short fiction that takes its title. Franklin is not a prolific writer, having forsaken quantity for quality, as evidenced by CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER, his third novel in a decade. By virtue of this book alone, it is Franklin who is worthy of newsmagazine cover treatment; Franklin for whom the bookstores should be opening at midnight, with the accompanying lines around the block; and Franklin whose work should be selected for high-profile book clubs. I am seeing some signs that I may not be alone in this opinion. A major bookseller, for example, has just selected CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER as its next "Main Selection." More honors, both critical and commercial, are sure to follow. And it's no wonder. His latest is a born classic.

The novel revolves around two men who were friends for a short but very pivotal time during their childhoods in the late 1970s in the rural South. Larry Ott was the son of white, working-class parents, while Silas "32" Jones was raised in a black, single-parent household, transplanted from urban Chicago to the backwoods of Chabot, Mississippi. Their brief friendship fractured, and Silas went on to become a high school baseball star while Larry was relegated to "weirdo" status as an odd duck. Larry's status went from harmless to dangerous when he picked up a girl for a drive-in movie date, and she was never seen again. While he was not arrested for any crime associated with the girl's disappearance, he was adjudged as guilty in everyone's mind and condemned to lead a solitary existence.

Silas left the area for college and returns after two decades to take a job as Chabot's constable. He goes out of his way to avoid Larry, who has spent the last 20 years running an auto repair shop that sees only the rare customer. When another young woman, the daughter of an important local business magnate, suddenly goes missing, the shadow of suspicion is once again cast upon Larry. Both men have secrets, each different from the other, that must be confronted if mercy is to be given and justice is to be done; and for such to be accomplished, the two will experience damage that neither will walk away from entirely intact. Yet there is the promise that each will emerge from their trials more complete than when they began.

CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER has a mystery at its core, but this is not a mystery or thriller novel. Rather, like all great works, it transcends any particular genre to stand on its own. One of my tests of "great literature" is whether the book in question puts me in the mind of other "classics" without mimicking or modernizing their themes. It meets that mark. One could draw a line beginning with Shakespeare --- OTHELLO specifically --- to A TALE OF TWO CITIES by Charles Dickens through SANCTUARY by William Faulkner, to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee through NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN by Cormac McCarthy, and then on to CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER. It is not that Franklin's newest work is specifically like any of these titles. Rather, it is the spirit he evokes through the focused delineation of his characters; the soft comedy and sharp tragedy of his dialogue; the complexity of the plot; and the issues of friendship, love, forgiveness and redemption, of what is owed and what can and cannot be repaid.

And if the journey is masterful, the conclusion is astounding, perfect in its understatement, with sentences, paragraphs and pages you will read over and over again. This is a work for the ages, an example of how the classic novel --- such a rare thing --- is properly written.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

129 of 136 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended... October 19, 2010

By Doc Welby

Format:Hardcover

I was hearing such rave reviews of this Tom Franklin novel from friends in the publishing industry that I had to see for myself...and I know the phrase is overused, but I truly "could not put it down". It's both a mystery novel and a story about friendship and growing up in a small town, and Franklin's writing is so visual that you see and hear the characters come to life as you turn the pages - after finishing it, I felt more like I had watched a movie than read a book. I look forward to future novels by this great writer.

67 of 72 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll Remember This One October 18, 2010

By Margaret Agresti

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

One of the best books I've read in a long time.

It's a thriller -- but not like all the other police procedurals/crime stories you've read. The two main characters are so well described you feel like you've known them all your life. The story starts out fast, solidly capturing your undivided attention -- and it never stops doing so. This is truly a book you don't want to put down.

More About the Author

I was born in the hamlet of Dickinson, Alabama, which has a population of around 400 and is about half-white, half-black. I attended Dickinson Baptist Church for a while. I grew up a nonhunter in a hunting household, and I liked writing, drawing, and reading. I am the first member of my family to finish college.

When I turned 18, we moved to Mobile, and my father, a mechanic, opened a shop there. I went to the University of South Alabama, but I got such bad grades that my father told me he wasn't going to pay anymore. From there, I got jobs in a warehouse, at a plant that made sandblasting grit, and finally with an engineering firm, which sent me to a chemical plant where I spent years cleaning up hazardous waste. All through these jobs, I took classes at the University of South Alabama, paying my own tuition as I went, and finally discovering creative writing classes. I worked in my late twenties, finishing my BA and beginning my MA, in a hospital in Mobile, and also tutoring in the university's writing lab. From there, I got a job teaching at Selma University, an historical all-black Baptist college. I was neither black nor Baptist (not anymore) and was, usually, the only white person on campus. I taught six classes one semester, six different classes, and five the next. I also finished my comprehensive exams for my MA, finished my thesis (a short story collection), and worked on my foreign language proficiency exam.

I'd published a few short stories and won third prize in the Playboy College Fiction Contest (around 1991), and so I decided to pursue writing as a career. I applied to several MFA programs and wound up, fortunately, at the University of Arkansas. There I met my wife, poet Beth Ann Fennelly. We got married at the end of that four-year-long program, and around the same time, I sold my first book, Poachers, and the idea for Hell at the Breech, to William Morrow. We lived apart that first year of marriage--it was hard getting teaching jobs in the same city--but moved to Galesburg, Illinois, where my wife got a job teaching at Knox College. I won the Philip Roth Residency at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and moved there for one semester. After that, we decided no more living apart.

I taught at Knox for a year, during which we had our first child, Claire. Then I was offered the John and Renee Grisham Chair in Creative Writing in Oxford, Mississippi. We moved there, planning to return to Galesburg, but never have. Beth Ann was offered a job at Ole Miss, and they named me an ongoing writer-in-residence--and there we remain to this day. Our second child, Thomas Gerald Franklin III (I'm Junior) was born in Oxford in 2005. We love Oxford and hope never to leave.