Review of The Tilted World by Tom Franklin & Beth Ann Fennelly

It is 4:30 in the morning and I have just finished reading The Tilted World. I want to start off by saying that the reason I picked this book turned out to be confusion on my part as I thought the book was called 'the titled world', so upon looking at it a second time at home after placing it in my stack from the library, I didn't read the title and in fact read an entire book before I looked again to read the title as it was truly known. sadly, this somewhat lessened my interest in the book as I thought I was going to be reading another book based on Jane Austen's style or Victorian era gentry. Alas, it was not ment to be. However, I considered it luck that I mistook the book and having decided to read it, went ahead and dove right in. The story centers on a Moonshiner and their spouse. Their names  are Dixie Clay and Jesse and their lives are complicated when government officials come to town looking for bootleggers. After a fashion, the novel also reveals that there is a larger issue at hand for the people of Hobnob, the small town in which the moonshiners live, The Mississippi River is at flood stage and the levee, protecting the small town and all the towns along the river, is at the breaking point. The novel opens slowly with a lot of buildup to the main storyline following Jesse and Dixie Clay, whose lives are being ever more complicated by both alcohol and prohibition. While I no next to nothing about fermentation or the making of alcohol, in any form, I felt for an armature, that vein of storyline was well written and believable. As to the character interactions, I felt that there were some characters you genuinely hated and some you really were rooting for while the main character Dixie Clay has you at odds with yourself throughout the story, doing things that both irk you and then make you want her to succeed. In a way, she becomes an antihero of sorts. If you are the kind of person who loves theif stories tied up in a little bow, this one ends with all the major plot lines pretty clearly laid bare and the main character sorted out nicely. I felt that, though there was not as much time for the supporting character to develope, owing to the lengthy introduction to Jesse and D. Clay, they were in some ways more deep than the novels stars, getting more flashbacks to their 'war time days' than we do of life as a child for Dixie or Jesse. In fact, in much the same way as Iago in Othello, we are left with a lot of questions about Jesse, his motivations and his endgame. Regardless of these mysteries, the novel has left me with good feelings about love and kindness, a different take on Calvin Coolidge as president, and a new outlook on moonshine, as a fine example of consumerism, capitalism, and growth. I am not saying moonshine is the way to go but I guess I am saying that it is better to take good with the bad and this book does just that. By the end, I had fallen in love with the characters and then been reminded of falling in love myself. Worth a lazy afternoon, or a few stolen moments throughout your week. I would say that after picking this book by mistake, I found serendipity between its covers both literal and literary.