Beth Ann Fennelly

The Tilted World is a collaborative effort between Tom Franklin, the masterful author of [b:Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter|7948230|Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter|Tom Franklin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1292689648s/7948230.jpg|11552215], and his wife Beth Ann Fennelly. The plot plays out against the backdrop of the 1927 Great Flood of the Mississippi River, in which 27,000 miles were inundated and hundreds of lives were lost.

Dixie Clay (okay, I admit that I loved that name) is a bootlegger. She distills the best hooch in the state while her charming husband, Jesse, conducts PR and sells. Ingersoll is a veteran of the Great War who has drifted into being a top-notch revenuer. Dixie Clay’s still is the one he is especially tasked to find and she is the key to finding out what happened to the last two revenuers sent to Hobnob to investigate. Ingersoll and Dixie Clay ought to be automatic enemies, but there is the matter of the husband who is the definition of bad and a baby whose welfare becomes a priority for them both.

The characters are well-drawn, and there are moments of brilliant writing with a plot that makes you smile and grimace in equal shares. But, the bad guy is just a little too senselessly bad. I know greed and ambition can make monsters, but this was a little over-the-top. The end was just a little too neatly tied for my tastes and totally lacked surprises. And, try to imagine finding one individual, of whom you had no idea of their whereabouts, at the height of the Katrina floods. The proverbial needle in the haystack. Sorry, but it would not be easy or quick.

So, a book that felt like a 4.5 star read three-quarters of the way in, turned out to be just a 3.0 by the end. It bears saying that Tom Franklin can write amazing books. Both [b:Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter|7948230|Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter|Tom Franklin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1292689648s/7948230.jpg|11552215] and [b:Hell at the Breech|214340|Hell at the Breech|Tom Franklin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1332556246s/214340.jpg|207505] were raw and realistic and moving. Both had much deeper issues being explored and both left me wanting more. I failed to find any deeper issues to contemplate here, which might account for why I felt disappointed when I closed the cover on this one.… (mer)