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melvankomen's review against another edition
4.0
Lovely book with a true beginning middle and end. It is plot-driven while being descriptive and evocative. I loved the historical weight the backdrop of the great flood of '27 provides. For the tender reader, be warned there's a bit of sex and violence.
suvata's review against another edition
4.0
• Kindle e-book • Scribd audiobook
Continuing my TBR project:
This is one of the oldest selections on my TBR list - Originally added November 11, 2017.
Set against the backdrop of the historic 1927 flooding of the Mississippi River, The Tilted World is an extraordinary tale of murder and moonshine, sandbagging and saboteurs, and a man and a woman who find unexpected love.
Continuing my TBR project:
This is one of the oldest selections on my TBR list - Originally added November 11, 2017.
Set against the backdrop of the historic 1927 flooding of the Mississippi River, The Tilted World is an extraordinary tale of murder and moonshine, sandbagging and saboteurs, and a man and a woman who find unexpected love.
suvata's review against another edition
4.0
• Kindle e-book • Scribd audiobook
Continuing my TBR project:
This is one of the oldest selections on my TBR list - Originally added November 11, 2017.
Set against the backdrop of the historic 1927 flooding of the Mississippi River, The Tilted World is an extraordinary tale of murder and moonshine, sandbagging and saboteurs, and a man and a woman who find unexpected love.
Continuing my TBR project:
This is one of the oldest selections on my TBR list - Originally added November 11, 2017.
Set against the backdrop of the historic 1927 flooding of the Mississippi River, The Tilted World is an extraordinary tale of murder and moonshine, sandbagging and saboteurs, and a man and a woman who find unexpected love.
readingwithhippos's review against another edition
3.0
Generally when I see a book has been written by two authors, my expectations go way down. Writing seems like such a solitary activity; I imagine a collaboration to read like two sports announcers vying for the microphone during overtime. Husband and wife writing duo Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly, however, avoid the ESPN factor in The Tilted World, their historical novel about the catastrophic 1927 flood of the Mississippi River.
Their two main characters are on opposite sides of Prohibition laws: Ingersoll is a revenuer, deputized by the federal government to root out and arrest those involved in the illegal production and distribution of alcohol, while Dixie Clay is a bootlegger, running the still and perfecting the recipe while her husband Jesse does the wheeling and dealing. But theirs isn't just a simple game of cat and mouse—it's complicated by an orphaned baby, a couple of revenuers who are missing and presumed dead, and of course by the mounting floodwaters that threaten the tiny town of Hobnob, Mississippi and most of the South besides. Oh, and their undeniable attraction to each other.
Fennelly is a poet, and I have to assume many of the lovelier prose passages are thanks to her skill. Feisty, resourceful Dixie Clay is an incredibly likable character and another highlight for me. I was rooting for her the whole way, lawbreaker or no. I also appreciated the historical detail Franklin and Fennelly managed to shoehorn into the narrative, as I didn't know such a large swath of the country had ever been flooded. The authors claim it's no surprise the flood has been largely forgotten, as it wasn't even taken seriously by President Coolidge at the time it occurred, bringing to mind more recent natural disasters and the subsequent inadequate response of the federal government.
If I have one complaint about the book, it's probably that the ending is too tidy for my taste. I'm certainly not against a happy ending, and I believe a book can be considered “serious” literature even if its characters don't all come to horrible ends, but in this case I felt some nuance was lost in service of happily ever after, particularly in regard to the orphaned Willy finding a new family. My experience with foster care tells me that even if an orphaned child is adopted into a loving and stable family, the loss of the birth parents doesn't just magically go away. It makes me a little cranky when books gloss over the layers of complication that come with child abandonment and adoption. Nitpicking aside, though, The Tilted World would be a solid choice for fans of historical fiction and romance.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
Their two main characters are on opposite sides of Prohibition laws: Ingersoll is a revenuer, deputized by the federal government to root out and arrest those involved in the illegal production and distribution of alcohol, while Dixie Clay is a bootlegger, running the still and perfecting the recipe while her husband Jesse does the wheeling and dealing. But theirs isn't just a simple game of cat and mouse—it's complicated by an orphaned baby, a couple of revenuers who are missing and presumed dead, and of course by the mounting floodwaters that threaten the tiny town of Hobnob, Mississippi and most of the South besides. Oh, and their undeniable attraction to each other.
Fennelly is a poet, and I have to assume many of the lovelier prose passages are thanks to her skill. Feisty, resourceful Dixie Clay is an incredibly likable character and another highlight for me. I was rooting for her the whole way, lawbreaker or no. I also appreciated the historical detail Franklin and Fennelly managed to shoehorn into the narrative, as I didn't know such a large swath of the country had ever been flooded. The authors claim it's no surprise the flood has been largely forgotten, as it wasn't even taken seriously by President Coolidge at the time it occurred, bringing to mind more recent natural disasters and the subsequent inadequate response of the federal government.
If I have one complaint about the book, it's probably that the ending is too tidy for my taste. I'm certainly not against a happy ending, and I believe a book can be considered “serious” literature even if its characters don't all come to horrible ends, but in this case I felt some nuance was lost in service of happily ever after, particularly in regard to the orphaned Willy finding a new family. My experience with foster care tells me that even if an orphaned child is adopted into a loving and stable family, the loss of the birth parents doesn't just magically go away. It makes me a little cranky when books gloss over the layers of complication that come with child abandonment and adoption. Nitpicking aside, though, The Tilted World would be a solid choice for fans of historical fiction and romance.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
gillianewise's review against another edition
5.0
oh my word. read an advance copy of this for work book club and this is definitely a must read for fall.
sjsjohnson's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars. Great story. I didn’t know about the Great Flood!
braxwall's review against another edition
4.0
Skröna från södern om mord, kärlek och bootlegging under förbudstiden. Lite som en film av bröderna Coen.
lazygal's review against another edition
2.0
Historical fiction/romance set during Prohibition and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
We have two stories that eventually intertwine: Dixie Clay (yes, that's really her name) married Jesse when she was really quite young, a marriage that isn't as satisfying as it could/should be as Jesse's a moonshiner and spends much time away from the house on "business" (which also includes time with women in whorehouses), and Ingersoll, a federal agent looking for moonshiners. We get their backstories as well as their present time, with Ingersoll looking for two agents who may have been killed and Dixie continuing to make some of the best moonshine around. Their first meeting comes about when Ingersoll and his partner Ham find a newly orphaned baby and (via a story twist) Ingersoll brings it to Dixie (who lost her son a year or so ago).
The description of what life must have been like at that time, fighting to keep your home with the threat of flood a constant (not to mention the endless, oppressive rain), was interesting. The methods used to battle the flood and the crest don't seem that removed from what we see today when there are major floods. Dixie's moonshining was also an interesting look at the process - her tweaks and flavors made what she was doing seem somehow less illegal and more experimental.
But ultimately it was the overwriting and the romance that didn't work for me. Sentences that could have been pared down were left filled with adjectives, and I didn't care enough about the characters for their relationships to matter to me.
ARC provided by publisher.
We have two stories that eventually intertwine: Dixie Clay (yes, that's really her name) married Jesse when she was really quite young, a marriage that isn't as satisfying as it could/should be as Jesse's a moonshiner and spends much time away from the house on "business" (which also includes time with women in whorehouses), and Ingersoll, a federal agent looking for moonshiners. We get their backstories as well as their present time, with Ingersoll looking for two agents who may have been killed and Dixie continuing to make some of the best moonshine around. Their first meeting comes about when Ingersoll and his partner Ham find a newly orphaned baby and (via a story twist) Ingersoll brings it to Dixie (who lost her son a year or so ago).
The description of what life must have been like at that time, fighting to keep your home with the threat of flood a constant (not to mention the endless, oppressive rain), was interesting. The methods used to battle the flood and the crest don't seem that removed from what we see today when there are major floods. Dixie's moonshining was also an interesting look at the process - her tweaks and flavors made what she was doing seem somehow less illegal and more experimental.
But ultimately it was the overwriting and the romance that didn't work for me. Sentences that could have been pared down were left filled with adjectives, and I didn't care enough about the characters for their relationships to matter to me.
ARC provided by publisher.
mazza57's review against another edition
4.0
well written telling of a fictional tale set upon real events. Good characterisation
thebooktrail88's review against another edition
4.0