The Tilted World
-
-
3.7 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $8.99
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
April 1927. After months of rain, the Mississippi River has reached dangerous levels and the little town of Hobnob, situated at a sharp bend in the river and protected only by a faltering levee, is at threat. Residents fear the levee will either explode under the pressure of the water or be blown by saboteurs from New Orleans, who wish to save their own city. Now Ingersoll, a blues-playing prohibition agent, and his gregarious partner Ham, must travel to Hobnob to investigate the strange disappearance of their predecessors; and then get out while they can. But when the men come across an orphaned baby, they can little imagine how events are about to change them - and the great South - forever. Dixie Clay is a bootlegger, brewing moonshine for her feckless husband Jesse ever since they lost their baby to scarlet fever. Her marriage crumbling, she is guarding a terrible secret about the two missing prohibition agents. Before long, the lives of Ingersoll and Dixie Clay will collide; everything they thought they knew about love and loyalty will turn on its head. And in the dead of night, after thick, illusory fog, the levee will break...
A gripping, lyrical novel set amongst the greatest natural disaster in US history, The Tilted World takes a devastating historical moment and weaves an unforgettable tale of love and survival.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rough South writer Franklin (Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter) and the poet and nonfiction writer Fennelly (Great with Child), distill in this prohibition-era tale of bootleggers and revenuers an atmospheric draught of prose that is at once poetic and gritty. It's 1927 Mississippi, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover has sent two unbribable federal revenue agents, Ted Ingersoll and Ham Johnson, into the maw of the Great Flood to investigate the disappearance of two other "prohis" from Hobnob Landing. On the way, Ingersoll and Ham find a baby, the lone survivor of a country-store looting gone bad. Ingersoll, an orphan himself, gives the boy to bootlegger Dixie Clay, a 22-year-old bereft of her own child. Along with her violent husband Jesse Holliver, Dixie might have been the last person to see the missing revenuers alive. Love for Dixie rises in Ingersoll's heart like the waters on the levee, and he knows that "to fix things... would require broken vows and broken laws, blood, desertion, and money." There's a bit of corn in this mash, but fans of Fennelly will savor her depictions of a mother's ferocious love, and Franklin's following will shine to the violent rendering of a nearly forgotten time and ethos.
