Big City Girl
Her husband in jail, a desperate young woman takes refuge among sharecroppers
Once, Cass Neely’s farm stretched across the entire valley, but decades of bad decisions and rotten luck have forced him to sell off nearly every inch. He and his son farm the meager remains of a once-great property, living in a grim downward spiral—until Cass’s daughter-in-law, Joy, moves in. She’s by far the most beautiful thing this county has ever seen, but she’s flat broke since her husband, Sewell, was put away for armed robbery. She’s also prickly, lazy, and vain—traits that don’t sit well with hardscrabble living—and it isn’t long before she starts to get a violent case of cabin fever. As the rains bear down and the river starts to threaten the cotton, Sewell escapes from police custody and heads for home. Come hell or high water, the Neely family will stick together, even if it means disaster.
Charles Williams
Charles Williams (1909–1975) was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years before leaving to work in the electronics industry. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime. Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay. Williams died in California in 1975.
