Chipola Moon Rising: A Landscape in Narrative, Seven West Florida Stories - Hardcover

Bowden, Jesse Earle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0942407911 ISBN 13: 9780942407914

Publisher: Father & Son Pub, 2009

Synopsis

Wild, sometimes erotic episodes enliven Ring Jaw, the small West Florida town in Chipola River Country. Jesse Earle Bowden paints a dynamic mosaic: forbidden passionate love, murder, family tragedy, enslaving brutality of the sun-baked turpentine woods –seven splendidly told narratives leavened with pathos and sardonic wisdom. Characters from his classic novel, Look and Tremble, join others in a vivid, powerful prose reverberating and resonating with mystery and delight. Evil Clint Hardlee frightens the town’s mayor who desperately plots a “Blood in the Sand” execution; a wily Texas evangelist explores the Garden of Eden edging the Apalachicola River, discovers his redheaded Eve called Amazing Gracey, and earthly passions reap devilishly embarrassing misbehavior; Prohibition officer Pistol Pete Bowdoin encounters Ring Jaw moonshiners and his Alabama-born cousin who predicts the dreaded lawman’s death two weeks before his 1925 slaying on the Choctawhatchee River; jookkeeper Mamie Love Sooky unites with whiskeymaker Marven Rivers to find religion and "Love in a Dry County"; a scarred woodsrider reveals his turpentine camp life in Bearthick Swamp that triggered a lynching of two men who maimed him; washerwoman Hattie Santee laments her whiskeymaker husband's shotgun death in the river swamps, losing two sons in World War II and the killing of her granddaughter by Hasty Ponds, who said he loved her; a "Chipola Moon Rising" romance between a high school student and his teacher Raven Rubaker is reignited at the fiftieth school class reunion.

Carl Wernicke, opinion editor of the Pensacola News Journal says, "J. Earle Bowden has distilled the history of Northwest Florida that is his first love into the kind of fiction that is history's first cousin. Good historical fiction tells more about the people and their lives than any academic history. This volume is a shot of straight Chipola River Valley history. Drink deep."

"Bowden's a Southern writer with Faulknerian style," says Pensacola writer Seldon Pierce. "He has mastered the short story and keeps the reader spellbound as he sketches stories of the Real South, using true-to-life happenings that he fictionalizes so perfectly." Pierce says, "You are there, reliving the 1930s and forties that Bowden remembers so brilliantly and so clearly. His mastery of the language of the thirties is on target. I recommend this master craftsman's novel Look and Tremble, Embrace an Autumnal Heart and When You Reach September. His Chipola Moon Rising really shines."

About this title

About the Author:

?Jesse Earle Bowden was editor-in-chief, vice president and editorial board chairman (1966-1997) of the Pensacola News Journal. He continues his column and editorial cartoons as editor emeritus. His News Journal career an an editor spans more than fifty-five years. Historian, book illustrator, author of twelve books, Bowden–a pioneer of Pensacola’s historical preservation movement–is recognized for inspiring the establishment of Gulf Island National Seashore. He was designated an honorary ranger by the National Park Service; the Santa Rosa Island Seashore highway is named the J. Earle Bowden Way. A native of Altha, a West Florida town in Chipola Country, the Florida State University graduate taught journalistic writing at the University of West Florida for twenty-four years. UWF awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters (1995). A 1967 charter trustee of the Historic Pensacola Preservation Board, Bowden served as board chairman (1982-2001) and continues the program under the University of West Florida as President of West Florida Historic Preservation, Inc. The J. Earle Bowden Building in Historic Pensacola honors his community work. He was Pensacola Historical Society president for eight years.

About this edition

• Publisher: Father & Son Pub
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0942407911
• ISBN 13: 9780942407914
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 237
• Illustrator: Bowden Jesse Earle