Paul H. Yarbrough

Mississippi Cotton (A Southern Novel) Paul H. Yarbrough First edition

Mississippi Cotton deftly brings to light the complex history of rural Mississippi in the 1950s. It is 1951. Jake Conner gets on a bus to visit his cousins in the Mississippi Delta. But when the body of an unknown man is found in the Mississippi River, Jake's summer vacation gets a little more adventurous as he and his cousins snoop around in a mystery that is better left to the grown ups.

"First time novelist, Paul H. Yarbrough, masterfully transports readers deep into the world of Mississippi Cotton, where life is not as simple as it seems." ~Julie Cantrell, editor, Southern Literary Review and bestselling author of Into the Free.

"In Mississippi Cotton a 20th Century Huck Finn has a real adventure. No matter that his raft is a Trailways Bus along the river, the trip is no less toward maturity. If you like a good story, this is your book, a book told by someone who knows the terrain--its history, people, landscape and culture. Only a proper native could have his narrator say that his daddy taught him never to hold onto anything with Lincoln's face longer than you had to." ~Dr. James Everett Kibler, author Walking Toward Home, Memories Keep, and Our Father's Fields

"Set in 1951, in the fictional Delta town of Cotton City, the story is more broadly a Southern story...an agrarian story. It is also a murder mystery. The body of an unknown man is found in the river at the Greenville Bridge. Jakes bus ride visit to his Delta cousins begins a parallel journey that ends in the discovery of the dead mans identity." ~Noel Workman, Delta Magazine