Paul Yarbrough is from the South, and it shows in this laid-back novel set in Mississippi state. The setting alone caught my attention and I enjoyed it very much. The central story has three boys in it, a youngster on holiday from Jackson and his two cousins Taylor and Casey from Cotton City. It is the early 1950s. The tone of the Mississippi delta area back then had a lot of racial tensions in it. Jake Connor spends a few weeks of his summer with his delta relatives. During his stay, the youths are engaged in a local murder mystery, get to do sweaty work in the cotton fields, and find new friends.
The wonderful warm tones of the narrative seem to be something that springs out of the southern weather and social habits of its people. Modesty is the law and competition, whether in the fields or at the fishing stream, or in war stories from the Civil War to Korea, is dominant. There is more than cotton culture here. Yarbrough gives us a glimpse into another era where both blacks and whites have an unsteady mix of trying to fit in. One man, BB, has the fortitude to judge people around him by a smile and the ability to do hard work. God blessed the cotton fields, he intones, and in consequence blessed the workers, no matter what their backgrounds were.
The story unfolds in a slow and dreamy way. Jake is in no hurry, but like all young boys, he is curious about grownups and their ways. Maintaining great politeness, he asks questions and he listens. There is a hint of "To Kill A Mockingbird" here; a black suspected of wrong-doing, marital twists and obscure backgrounds and moral reasoning by everyone. Jake's Aunt Carol is the guardian of all of this. She even gives advice to the men on baseball, a topic raised quite often: "Anybody that eats rattlesnakes and panthers for breakfast oughta be able to hit a curve ball." Wisdom comes about through the eyes of these boys. For the men, like Jake's father David, advise was very simple: "Rain'll make 'em grow". For the boys, advice was something different: "A driver's license was the gateway to life..."
There are plenty of evocative scenes of the countryside. Jake observes "...the dust rising, mixing with the orange and pink glare of the sun setting. It appeared to drop into the river, where we had spent most of the day. For a second, I thought about climbing the windmill and watching it disappear." About the big man, BB, he surmises, "I believe behind a mule he could have turned more ground than a tractor driven by a stock car driver." At another point in time, Jake concluded that "Sometimes it wasn't easy to have fun", as the boys were always trying to sneak their fun behind the adults. Jake's observations on the gentle and honest ways of some of these adults reminds us of a time when some things back then were indeed kinder and better. You built your character by fighting against adversities, to be a good Mississipian, like the good cotton that grew there.
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