Used – In the River’s Fury, Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly

Mississippi, 1927. Swollen by torrential rains, the river threatens to destroy the levees protecting the region and engulf the small hamlet of Hobnob, where federal agents Ted Ingersoll and Ham Johnson are investigating the disappearance of two colleagues who came to arrest a liquor trafficker.

In the heart of this apocalyptic landscape, they discover an abandoned baby, whom Ingersoll - an orphan himself - by chance entrusts to Dixie Clay Holliver. Little does he know that the young woman is the county's biggest bootlegger, and perhaps also the last person to have seen the two agents alive...

Tom Franklin, author of Smonk and a prominent voice in Southern literature, unites his voice here with that of his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly. Set against the dramatic backdrop of Prohibition and one of the greatest natural disasters in US history, this novel is as much a fresco of an era as it is of a place where beauty coexists daily with danger.

"A new novel by Tom Franklin is always a reason to rejoice, but a novel that unites Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly is a celebration!" Dennis Lehane