Miss Jenny And The Minnows by the author of A Land Remembered

There's a 20 year old mystery in the old southern town of Lofton that keep the men who hang out in front of of Joe's Bait Shop occupied. Every Friday afternoon at almost the same time of day, the elderly spinster, Jenny Lofton, known to the townfolk as Miss Jenny, journeys from her big Victorian house, Mason jar in hand and walks past the men into the bait shop with a singular mission. To purchase a single minnow. Then as quietly as she arrives, she heads back home always leaving the men scratching their heads. Why, the men ponder, does she buy only a single minnow and what does she do with it? Does she eat it? Put it in her fish pond in her yard? No, they've discovered that isn't the case. They all share the question, "What in tarnation does she do with it?"

Only Jenny knows...and soon the reader will be taken down the path of a lonely, old woman into a sinister secret.

In a story that evokes the lurid appeal and somewhat Gothic atmosphere of William Faulkner's, A Rose For Emily, Patrick Smith weaves a tale of the sad, lonely world of a woman dealing with her genteel Southern society's rigid social constraints. Although inspired by his mentor and fellow Mississippian, this story is quintessential Patrick Smith. Those familiar with his acclaimed work of Florida historical fiction, A Land Remembered, will see the style and writing in this earlier work that would garner the awards and accolades that came later in his career.