THE LADY IN RED, WITH PROMISES KEPT

About the Book

A long-standing mystery remained rooted in the Mississippi Delta following a discovery in 1969 by a backhoe operator digging a hole to install a septic system in a homeowner’s garden at Egypt Plantation. He had unearthed a metal coffin with a glass window, through which the face of a beautiful, young antebellum woman could be seen, with her fancy red dress earning her the sobriquet “Lady in Red.” Following failed attempts to discern her identity, her place of origin, or any details of her burial, she was reburied in a pauper’s grave in nearby Lexington. A half-century later, following generations of the mystery remaining unsolved with no valid answers offered up, a local fisherman proposes a new theory about her identity and origin, to spur public interest in initiating the endeavor to finally solve the mystery of the Lady in Red. The story creates a world in which a woman is born and raised in the Mississippi Delta during the era when the region was first settled by immigrants after they acquired the land from the Choctaw Nation in 1830. Her short and exciting life, earning her admiration from the local populace, is laid out in detail, and the circumstances surrounding her life and death are described in a scenario about what could have occurred to result in the discovery of her coffin being buried in a shallow grave next to the Yazoo River on Egypt Plantation. The book is largely based on my own life and the lives of my family and friends in the Mississippi Delta. Having been raised next to the Yalobusha River in a fisherman family, I simply drew from personal experiences when writing the book. In fact, one could say that the story wrote itself, and I simply turned it into a book.

About the Author

The author’s life growing up in a Mississippi Delta fisherman’s family mirrored the characters in his book. He applies his conceptual skills, learned when studying art and architecture at Mississippi State University, to weave stories that tie the lives of fabricated people with actual history. He believes that his fictitious characters seem more real when immersed in real events that were occurring all around them. A fan of Civil War historian and author Shelby Foote, he utilizes some of the writing techniques that Foote advocated from the works of his own admired writer, French author Marcel Proust.