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Joe Landsale: Edge of Dark Water

753C

Active Member
Edge of Dark Water - Joe Landsale :star3:3/4

The plot follows three teeneagers in 1940's rural East Texas whose friend is found murdered, her body weighted and sunk in a fishing pond. Her wish was to escape her home and travel to Hollywood to become a star, so naturally they form a plan to dig her up, burn her body, put the ashes in a can, float down the Sabine river on a raft to the nearest town with a bus stop and take her out to California to sprinkle her ashes. The plot thickens when they discover a stash of money stolen by the victims brother from a bank. Their plans of running away quickly turn to a plan of escape, as they are pursued by murderous family members and the crooked local police. The muck gets deeper when they discover that the girls father has hired a monstrous rural legend named "Skunk" to hunt them down. Skunk always gets the person he hunts, and he always removes their hands with a hatchet.

This was my first read from this author and I must say I enjoyed every page of the story. I read a review that compared this story to Huckleberry Finn. That would be an apt comparison in my opinion. The river, the kids, the little adventures along the river, the poverty, the racial dynamics, etc. The lives of the children are joyless and sad in the way that rural poverty usually is. However, the story is laugh out loud funny in many places due to Landsale's darkly humorous style of writing. I kept thinking : wow, I wish the Cohen Brothers would make this into a movie...
Recommended.
 
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