By Blog Author Anita Havens

Murder, moonshine, and dark secrets spanning seventy years—set in the red clay hills of Mississippi.

Seventy years have passed since that night—since two children witnessed something so horrible that its very memory has been erased from the consciousness of this close-knit southern community.
Now, Scott Griffin has come home, home to a Mississippi he knows only from his grandmother’s stories, and that knows him only as an outsider, a hotshot cop from Chicago. When Scott came here, hoping to start a new life far from the slums where he grew up, he never expected to land in the middle of the case of a lifetime—or in the arms of Angela Woodard, the beautiful, hot-tempered deputy who becomes his new partner. But the citizens of Calhoun County are being murdered, and Scott alone holds the key that can unlock the mystery.
As his feelings for Angela grow, Scott realizes that if he is to save their future, he must delve into the shadows of his own heritage, back to a time when the threat of starvation made honest men do desperate things—a time when bootleggers and revenuers turned quiet Calhoun County into a war zone. For the only one who can stop the killer has kept her deadly secret for 70 years—since the night her innocence was shattered by the blast of a double-barreled shotgun.

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CHICKENBONE CHURCH REUNION is currently available as a Kindle edition. The hardback and paperback are out of print. Here is a link to the KINDLE EDITION.

I wrote this book for my grandfather, Aubrey “Shuck” Williams. My grandfather used to love to sit around the supper table on lazy summer nights and tell old moonshine tales from his early days in the 1930s, and I loved to listen. Without his stories, this book would never have been possible.

Most people do not realize how long the moonshine culture lasted here in the red clay hills of central Mississippi. I remember back in the early 1970s, one of Shuck’s best friends, Bud, got himself caught. It was Christmas, and my grandfather went around the community collecting money to bail Bud out. My grandfather told me later that everyone he asked donated except one person–the sheriff at Water Valley where Bud was being held in the local jail.

Shuck said the sheriff pulled on his chin and seemed to be considering for several minutes before he answered, “Well Shuck, it’s like this. I would give you money to help bail Bud out…if I hadn’t worked so hard to catch him!”

Back in the 1930s, during the worst of the Great Depression, another of Shuck’s friends was caught making moonshine. The federal revenuers who caught Lee Knew that if he did not get his crop in, his family would probably starve. So they made arrangements for Lee to come to the Atlanta penitentiary as soon as the crops were gathered that fall.

Shuck told me that he carried Lee to Water Valley in a mule drawn wagon to catch the train and gave him a dollar to buy something to eat on the way. Knowing my grandfather, it was probably his last dollar!

As Lee was boarding the train bound for the federal prison, he shook my grandfather’s hand and said, “Aye golly Shuck, you’re the best friend I ever had. I shore wish you was coming with me!”

Although I have never met a soul who said that my grandfather was ever connected with moonshine in any way, to this day, the remains of two whisky stills lie rusting away in the spring hollows of our old farm here in Calhoun County, Mississippi.