Can You Outrun the Past?

“Sometimes we do bad things without knowing the reason.” Truth.

24.12 Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

The description of this book reads:

“In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas Jones were boyhood pals in a small town in rural Mississippi. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry was the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, black single mother. But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed . . . and was never charged.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary, shunned existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has become the town constable. And now another girl has disappeared, forcing two men who once called each other “friend"” to confront a past they’ve buried for decades.”

Sounds like a pretty standard mystery, right? Well, you figure out the various mysteries easily as they unfold, and you are meant to.  It gives you time to focus on Larry and Silas and their experiences.

They couldn’t be more different, but every bit of their existence is linked to the other. They barely know each other, but they have each shaped the others current circumstances without even knowing how much. It is fascinating to read as all of the connections unwind, even though it is not done in a shocking way like I was expecting. 

But man, it is a terribly sad book. Achingly so. It was hard to read for the recognition of the unfairness of life. It made me really sad.  It is a really well written book that took me up and carried me along.  It reminds you of those things you learned as a kid and will always remember in that way, like the way I sing the Halloween song every time I write the word. The assumptions we hold about people and places and never let go of even though new realities are at the forefront.  We are always so much who we were as children.  Even though we grow up and become someone else, that other person is never far behind.