In this fifth anthology, members of the award-winning Malice in Memphis writers group relate tales about the Mississippi River and its denizens. The people who live and work and love and die on her banks or in her muddy current recognize she is nobody's water park. There is something for every reader. Meet the characters whose lives are defined by secrets, barbecue, blues, ghosts, killers and rescuers, lovers and haters, crime and-sometimes-punishment. All are touched by the river for good or more frequently by evil. The characters and the stories are fiction-the river is not.

From the hills to the coast, the people of Mississippi have stories to tell. Most would never guess that Raleigh, Mississippi, once played host to the National Tobacco Spitting Contest. Over in Okolona, children are told of the man who lived--and died--deep down in a hole and scared passersby. From the gandy dancers who built the first train tracks in Mississippi to the eight-foot-tall man who lived in the woods of Columbia, read tales that range from common myth to a good bit of righteous gossip. Author and storyteller Diane Williams traveled across the Magnolia State to gather these local legends and has compiled them into an inquisitive, laugh-out-loud collection.

The great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed America.

This scholarly, carefully researched book studies one of the most overlooked minority groups in Americathe Chinese of the Mississippi Delta. During Reconstruction, white plantation owners imported Chinese sharecroppers in the hope of replacing their black laborers. In the beginning they were classed with blacks. But the Chinese soon moved into the towns and became almost without exception, owners of small groceries. Loewen details their astounding transition from black to essentially white status with an insight seldom found in studies of race relationships in the Deep South.

Read a free excerpt here! American engineers have done astounding things to bend the Mississippi River to their will: forcing one of its tributaries to flow uphill, transforming over a thousand miles of roiling currents into a placid staircase of water, and wresting the lower half of the river apart from its floodplain. American law has aided and abetted these feats. But despite our best efforts, so-called “natural disasters” continue to strike the Mississippi basin, as raging floodwaters decimate waterfront communities and abandoned towns literally crumble into the Gulf of Mexico. In some places, only the tombstones remain, leaning at odd angles as the underlying soil erodes away. Mississippi River Tragedies reveals that it is seductively deceptive—but horribly misleading—to call such catastrophes “natural.” Authors Christine A. Klein and Sandra B. Zellmer present a sympathetic account of the human dreams, pride, and foibles that got us to this point, weaving together engaging historical narratives and accessible law stories drawn from actual courtroom dramas. The authors deftly uncover the larger story of how the law reflects and even amplifies our ambivalent attitude toward nature—simultaneously revering wild rivers and places for what they are, while working feverishly to change them into something else. Despite their sobering revelations, the authors’ final message is one of hope. Although the acknowledgement of human responsibility for unnatural disasters can lead to blame, guilt, and liability, it can also prod us to confront the consequences of our actions, leading to a liberating sense of possibility and to the knowledge necessary to avoid future disasters.

The true story of a young black man's quest: to canoe the length of the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans.