Rhythm and Books

Winners' Table

John Grisham didn't drop by Turnrow last week only to sign copies of his new legal thriller, The Confession — read our review here — he also came to deliver on a promise to take lunch with a group of school kids who entered our Theodore Boone essay writing contest.  The contest, announced during the summer, was an attempt to get kids to read Grisham's new novel for young readers and to inspire them to write their own stories.  We asked students to write a mystery in which they put themselves as the hero, solving the case using their own unique talents and interests.

Out of the pile of entries we chose three from a variety of ages that showed the most promise.  The winners, pictured with Grisham at left, were (l. to r.) Jasmine Murphy, Steele Robbins, and Baylor Pillow.  The students, joined by their teachers, were invited to take a break from class and eat with Grisham in the Turnrow Cafe.  The event brought out some curious onlookers and doting parents.  It was quite a scene.

Thanks to Andrea Hall of the Greenwood Commonwealth, who was there to cover the winner's lunch.  Her article appeared in the local paper last week and captured the kids' enthusiasm:

"I enjoyed meeting him very much," said Robbins, 9. "I loved that he took precious time out of his schedule to eat with us."

A third-grader at Pillow Academy, Robbins wrote about what he knows best — his life at school. But instead of writing about a typical day, he wrote about something he thought "would be cool if it happened."

The result: His teacher, Gina Hutson, was the suspected murderer in his story, "Something Smells Fishy."

"It was a lot of effort," said Robbins. "I love writing, and meeting Mr. Grisham inspired me."

Grisham's words also inspired Murphy to keep writing and keep pushing even when no one seems to be listening, or, in a writer’s case, reading.

"His first book was rejected by multiple publishers," said the Leflore County High School freshman. "This is the first time I have ever really been recognized for what I love to do. So I think I am having some of the same feelings he did."

Murphy, 14, entered the contest on a whim after she saw one of her friends writing a story. "She told me she was writing a story called 'Nightmare on Elmo Street' for a contest," Murphy said.

Murphy approached her friend's English teacher, Jamie Doak, to find out more about the competition. "I entered the contest because I have always been amazing at English," said Murphy. "Writing is my life."

She sees it as a form of expression and an opportunity to live in a different world for a while.

"I'm always spacing out," said Murphy. "I'm always thinking about ideas for stories. Mr. Grisham had a lot of good advice about finding stories and that sometimes they just hit him."

Although Murphy was ecstatic to join the author for lunch, she didn't say much.

"I wanted to hear what he had to say," said Murphy. "He told us we need to listen to what our teachers are saying because it will improve our writing. He also said there is a story in everything."

Murphy is already working on her next piece. This time it's something a little closer to home.

"For the contest, I wanted to create a story that was kind of a dreamy and far from my ordinary life," she said. "I want my next one to be about a shy girl's days in high school. It is what I know."

Baylor Pillow, 10, also wrote about what he knows in his story, "The Super Car Story," about a Chrysler that looks like a Bentley.

"I've always loved cars," said Pillow, who's a fifth-grader at Pillow Academy.

He even talked about his interest in cars with Grisham during lunch.

"It was an amazing experience to meet someone people all over America recognize and read," he said. "He talked about how he writes and just asked us questions about ourselves to get to know us."

Pillow says he learned that writers have to capture and audience from the beginning.

"I think now I know how to write better," he said.

Grisham said the essays were diverse, creative and enjoyable to read.

"I asked myself if I could have written that when I was 8," he said, laughing a little.

Although Grisham says most authors aren't published before 25 or 30 years old, he hopes writing opportunities like this competition will inspire them to keep practicing their skills and, of course, to get them reading.

"I don't know any writer who doesn't love to read," said Grisham.

Before publishing his children's book, Grisham neither had time nor really wanted to read a collection of children's books, so he consulted the fifth-grade class in Raleigh, N.C. that his daughter teaches.

"Back in January I read several chapters to her class to get their response," he said. "It was terrifying reading to kids because they will say anything or ask anything."

In Greenwood, however, the hardest questions Grisham faced from the students were about where he gets his ideas and some of his tips and techniques.

Grisham plans to turn his kid lawyer Theo Boone into a series and is already working on the second installment.

"It is a diversion for me," he said. "I've learned a lot about children's literature. I hope each Theo will educate kids a little bit about the law."

Among the lunch highlights was a conversation between Grisham and Pillow in which the author tried to convince the 10-year-old car enthusiast to reconsider his dream of driving a Rolls Royce.  "You just don't want that kind of attention in a small town," he advised the unflappable Pillow good-naturedly.  "You'd be better off with a Mercedes or Jaguar."

Grisham, who drives an Audi, expects to be back in Greenwood in the spring when the second Theodore Boone novel is due.

The Confession

John Grisham paid us a visit last week to sign copies of The Confession. His new legal thriller is a nail-biter with a heart and an unlikely twist that makes this one of his most powerful novels in quite a while.  He returns to one of his favorite and most fascinating topics, the death penalty, which he explored early on in The Chamber and more recently in his non-fiction work, The Innocent Man. 

The setting is Texas, a hot-bed for capital punishment. The town of Sloan is certainly clamoring to see one of their local sons get his own lethal dose of Texas justice, an African-American death row inmate and former high school football star named Donté Drum. He was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering a popular white high school cheerleader. The problem is, there was no physical evidence attaching him to the crime (no body at all, in fact) and the interrogation and confession were poorly handled by the local police. Nevertheless, Donté's number is called. Public opinion is stacked against him, his legal team is fast running out of options, and the local black community has threatened to riot if the sentence is carried out.

Into the fray come Travis Boyette, a convicted felon serving out his parole for sex crimes in a Kansas halfway house. He claims to be stricken with an inoperable brain tumor, and in a last-ditch he effort to make peace before his impending death, he finds Lutheran minister, Keith Schroeder, confesses that he killed the girl and wants to help free Donté. He'll testify, even lead them to the body if necessary. But time to set the record straight has come down to a frightful few hours.

This is pure Grisham, racing against the clock to score a pardon, with a front of politicians and lawyers dead set on thwarting their efforts. The characters are given dimension, especially the conflicted minister who reluctantly aids the creepy Boyette in his parole-violating race to Texas, and Robbie Flak, Donté's smug and showboating attorney who pulls out all the stops to save his client.

Suffice to say, things don't quite turn out like you might imagine. And for Grisham readers who complain about his hasty endings, this one is carefully formulated and powerful. All in all, this is a strong performance, a fast and thrilling read, a reliable entertainment with brains and heart.

Don't forget to order your signed copy of The Confession.

The Eden Hunter

During Tom Franklin's visit last week, when he signed and discussed his new novel, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (signed copies here), we swapped some of our favorite books of the year. We both agreed that Skip Horack's first novel was a stand-out.

Last year we discovered Skip's first collection of short stories, The Southern Cross. We enjoyed it so much and found so many customers who agreed with us that Skip paid us a visit during his holiday break from teaching at Stanford. Among the evening's highlights — which culminated in a midnight ramble to Robert Johnson's grave — was a preview of The Eden Hunter, which was released early this fall.

The Eden Hunter follows the journey of Kau, a Pygmy warrior and runaway slave wandering through the unsettled Florida wilderness. Kau wants nothing more than to find a place where he can be free and live in nature as he did in Africa. As Kau struggles through the wilderness, he encounters a band of rogue Native Americans, whose thievery and mysticism cause continued strife, and ultimately happens upon an abandoned British fort run by several hundred former slaves who, after the war of 1812, were left to defend the fort from the Americans by themselves. The elements are based on actual historical events and shed light on a fascinating, long-forgotten period of American history.

One may be tempted to compare Horack's writing to Tom Franklin or Larry Brown, especially The Southern Cross, which chronicles the wayward lives of marginal Southerners. But The Eden Hunter calls to mind the old masters like Melville and Conrad and Hemingway, especially the way Horack draws rich drama from the conflict and beauty of nature.

In one memorable scene Kau, who is often provoked to recall his youth in Africa, describes tracking a man-eating black leopard.  He has found a mauled farmer beneath a tree and hides in its branches until nightfall to wait and kill the beast when it returns to finish eating its kill:

The long night passed without any sign of the leopard, and as dawn came he spotted the first of them — a colony of driver ants was moving through the forest, a dark brown band of butchers coming million after million. They swept closer and the base of his bent tree divided the river into halves. He saw a sprinkling of foragers ascend the tree trunk, following the stink trail of the cat-killed man. A single ant perched itself on a rib bone of the corpse. It reared back on hind legs, seemed to celebrate before retreating. Some collective intelligence clicked and both columns shifted and then doubled back. They met at the tree and soon ants covered the dead man. The leopard had lost her kill.

The inspired language is spare and elegant, precise, entrancing the reader along Kau's journey like a sidekick. The dialogue is equally effective, spot-on, as if taken from the early 1800s journals of some colorful storytelling sojourner.

We've invited Skip back and hope to see him in the spring. In the meantime, fans of Southern literature should get on board — we're now firmly convinced that Skip is one of the best currently publishing.

Crooked Tom

Our pal Tom Franklin pulls in today to sign and read from his new novel, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.  Tom's first two novels, Hell at the Breech and Smonk, both set in his native Alabama, are historically provocative, beautifully written books.  Now his first contemporary novel is imbued with the sense of place found in his adopted home of north Mississippi.

The novel is a thinker's mystery, a thoughtful study of random friendship and questionable loyalties as much as a potboiler.  After being implicated years earlier in a girl's disappearance, Larry Ott has spent his life in seclusion.  He is revisited by his only boyhood friend/ foe, now the local sheriff, when another girl goes missing and Larry is naturally suspected. Only this time Larry is more than a suspect.

This is a novel to bathe in, to slowly let the imagery and honesty of the Mississippi landscape and characters saturate your every pore. Ages after putting the book down, readers will be haunted by the lovely sentences and the dark, strange, believable truths at its heart.  For a relative newcomer to Mississippi, we're proud to call Tom one of our state's best writers.

The book is growing in popularity around the country.  Independent booksellers named it their top pick of October in the monthly Indie Next List, and Ron Charles of the Washington Post wrote, "If you're looking for a smart, thoughtful novel that sinks deep into a Southern hamlet of the American psyche, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is your next book."  Tom also managed to scramble aboard the New York Times extended bestseller list, an improbably feet for a dark Southern literary novel.

Come out tonight at 5:30 p.m. and raise a toast to this fine writer, or claim a signed copy of your next Mississippi book.

State of Blues

Mississippi Gulf Coast photographer Ken Murphy stopped in late Wednesday to deliver copies of his new photography book Mississippi: State of Blues.  Not your typical self-publisher, Ken likes to deliver his fine collections in person.  As soon as they arrive off the boat from the overseas printer, he loads them in a van and rolls up the state, stopping and visiting booksellers along the way, showing off his handsome wares like a true craftsman.

State of Blues is Ken's third book, behind My Gulf Coast Home, a time-capsule keepsake of the Coast as it existed right before Katrina, and Mississippi, the popular, multi-covered collection of crisp photos from every nook and cranny of the state.  Ken's high-def style, showcasing familiar Mississippi scenery in grand panoramas that crackle with color and detail, make his books highly sought collectibles.  Those characteristics are present in the new book, along with a new sampling of portraiture, from performance shots of musicians like B.B. King and Bobby Rush in action, to great crowd shots and off-stage moments, such as T-Model Ford posing with his family.

With text by Scott Barretta, the fun-time blues scholar and host of Mississippi Public Radio's Highway 61, State of Blues is a unique snapshot of the Mississippi Blues as it exists today.  Anyone who's ever made a blues pilgrimage to the state in recent years, or anyone who has dreamed of such a trip, will find exactly what they're looking for in these pages.  The book is filled with images of thriving clubs, festivals, studios and musicians, many of them obscure beyond our state lines, along with holy sites and Ken's quintessential quiet landscapes.  Together, they provide an accurate and compelling overview of how the blues still thrives in Mississippi.

We always look forward to Ken's visit, not only to get our hands on his latest book, but also to catch up and trade some good gripes about the state of political affairs.  Ken has an interesting perspective on all matters.  We've been especially intrigued by his innovative ideas regarding public policy and transportation (ask him about his Maglev train idea that would tie residents of Mississippi closer together), the kind of rational, innovative, ground-level ideas that government seems to be ignoring these days, as evidenced by the rancor in national and local politics.  For a country overwhelmed by internal problems and evolving complexities, our leaders seem disinterested in anything more than appearing on TV, recycling the same petty grievances, and ratcheting up the gridlock.  Too bad more ideas like Ken's aren't considered by our state and national leaders.

If you want an immediate dose of Ken's perspective, visit some samples from Mississippi: State of Blues at his website, and order a signed copy at our website.  We'll host a signing and party for the book with Ken and Scott at Turnrow on Black Friday, November 26.