THE TILTED WORLD by TOM FRANKLIN and BETH ANN FENNELLY

It takes only a few minutes with this wonderful book to realize a poet had a major part in the writing, so it was no surprise when I read about the authors and found that Fennelly is an award-winning poet.  I started to mark passages that I would like to quote in my review but soon stopped.  I would have had to quote nearly the entire book.  I savored this one slowly because the writing was so beautiful even though I was anxious to find out how the story progressed.  

The story is set in 1927 Mississippi in and near a little town called Hobnob.  A young, naive woman, Dixie Clay, has come there to live with her new handsome husband in a lovely home. She looks forward to a happy life and many children, but such is not to be.  Her husband, Jesse, is a phony, a liar, a bootlegger, and a womanizer.  After Dixie Clay loses her first baby, she finds the still and takes over the moonshining despite the fact that she fears Jesse has murdered two revenuers and is practically living at whorehouses.  

Dixie Clay is made of strong stuff so when investigating revenuers discover an orphaned baby boy, one of them takes the child to her.  Ham and Ingersoll go on investigating and suspect Jesse but Ingersoll doesn't know that he has taken that precious baby to Jesse's wife nor that she is the actual moonshiner.  

Complications multiply as the area is threatened with the greatest flood in that part of the Mississippi River.  I've spent some time beside the Mississippi River so I recognized the feeling of the mud and the odor of that brown water that was so brilliantly described by these authors.  Although I've never been there during flooding, I felt like I was wet and caught up in it as I read.  The sensations are almost physical.

I missed Franklin's earlier hit book, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, but I'm determined to read it now.  I've discovered a treasure in fiction.

Highly recommended
Source:  Amazon Vine