News from the Book Club

The Augusta Library's Adult Book Club (adult in the strictly respectable sense of being composed of adults, that is) met on Wednesday, Oct. 9, to discuss Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin. The meeting featured a long and lively discussion, particularly about the characters' actions and motivations. The general consensus was that the characters were well-developed and the plot intriguing enough to sustain readers' interest. (Although one book club member DID complain that the ending left "too many loose ends...") Overall, though, the members seemed pleased with the selection, and many expressed interest in reading other books by Tom Franklin.

The Adult Book Club meets at the library at 6:30 p.m. on the second Wednesday of every month. Our next selection will be Great House by Nicole Krauss; copies are available at the library's front desk.

The following is the synopsis of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter featured on Goodreads.com.


Tom Franklin's narrative power and flair for characterization have been compared to the likes of Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor, Elmore Leonard, and Cormac McCarthy.

Now the Edgar Award-winning author returns with his most accomplished and resonant novel so far; an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county— and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.