The Edgar Award winning thriller The Bottoms is classic American storytelling in its truest, darkest, and more affecting formwith echoes of William Faulkner and Harper Lee. Its 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die … mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an innocent black man. Together with his younger sister, Harry sets out to discover who the real killer is, and to do so they will search for a truth that resides far deeper than any river or skin color.
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This fine story won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2001, and rightly so. Set in East Texas, in the bottomlands near the Sabine River during the Great Depression, it’s a grisly tale of murder, racial prejudice, and poverty seen through the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy. Not only is the story a compelling thriller in the best sense of that word, …
A lush, poignant story of the South in 1933, told in a voice reminiscent of Tom Sawyer and To Kill A Mockingbird. Unforgettable.
Lansdale brings authentic towns and characters to life. Most of his stories take place in East Texas where he’s from, and the western flavors of rural towns in the early 1900’s is sizzling. This is a coming of age story, which he does so well, and intertwines a murder mystery into it. His wit is alive, and he doesn’t hold back in telling things …
Joe Lansdale is one of the most versatile authors writing today. From horror to historical, YA to SF, his stories are wide-ranging and wonderfully written. The stories he tells will carry the reader away and The Bottoms does just that, to an era and an area of the country most of us don’t know, yet we believe what he tells us.
Although portions …
This is classic American storytelling told in rich, evocative prose about what is, in some ways, a simpler time.
Two things that are never simple however: murder and racial tension.
1933 – Marvel Creek, East Texas:
Eleven-year-old Harry Collins and his younger sister, Thomasina, come across the mutilated corpse of a black woman in the Sabine …
The evocative description of the world of “The Bottoms”, and appealing 1st person voice of the boy who is the main protagonist pulled me right into the story. Joe Lansdale is an amazing writer. Only two issues with this book: 1) it started out as a mystery with a touch of horror and great characters, but around the middle became a hammering …
It seems like many authors that write a bunch of books end up doing a coming of age book at some point. THE BOTTOMS is Lansdale’s coming of age book. And in typical fashion for Lansdale he does it in his own way.
The story follows Harry Crane, a young boy who discovers a dead body in a river. Harry’s father, the local constable, starts an …
I loved this book…the story has never left me after having read it a few years ago!