The Cotton Widow in Climax

It was 1930, at the depth of the Great Depression, when Annie, sixteen and dirt-poor, came to Climax, Texas, with her sharecropper husband to work for a miserly cotton farm owner. A few months later, the husband was dead, hung in the strap of a cotton sack. Shortly after that, the young widow married the much older farm owner. Then the farm owner was blasted to the beyond by a shotgun. Annie is widowed again, but now she possesses the farm. Did Annie kill two husbands? Folks in Climax think so. They’re also mighty curious about the handsome young man who’s now the widow’s sharecropper. What about the bundle of money the farm owner had? Where had it come from? Now that he’s dead, where is it? Do the answers lie in his dying words?

More than a who-done-it, The Cotton Widow in Climax is a confluence of grizzled language and Thomas Hardy poetry, homespun punditry with wizened philosophy, and renegade religion mixed with moonshine.

Reporter Jerden Jeffers crafts a tantalizing tale of tangled suspense with gritty characters as real as dirt and with wry, drawled dialog from lips that drip tobacco juice. Filled with rich details of living on the edge of poverty, The Cotton Widow in Climax is masterfully told. Packed with twists and wit, it’s a perfect balance of icy tension and warm humor. Suspicion has never felt so good.