Celestial Reflections in the Tallahatchie River
The saga of the side-wheel steamship Star of the West
by
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While living in close proximity to the cabin of the Pluett and Janes families, Red Elm had inevitably met the captain’s English wife, Sarah, and he had instantly become enamored with the young blonde woman. While the captain was still away at war, the Pluetts and Janeses had moved to another uninhabited location that lay alongside a bayou -- now called McNutt Lake -- about 15 or so miles to the north. Shortly thereafter, Red Elm had kidnapped Sarah from that location, and he had held her captive for a period of several weeks. She had bravely, yet unsuccessfully, attempted to escape many times during her captivity. Pluett had eventually gone to Sarah’s rescue when he had finally been able to track them down. When he had caught up with them, he and Red Elm had fiercely fought in Pluett’s small wooden sailboat. During the life-and-death altercation, Pluett had struck Red Elm on his head with a boat oar, incapacitating him in the process. He had then killed Red Elm by grabbing the Indian’s knife and slashing his throat, nearly decapitating him. They had had to pry Red Elm’s fingers from Sarah’s arm in order to gain her release from her dead captor. Following Sarah’s release from captivity, Captain Janes had finally returned from the war, only to find his wife gravely ill with a deadly and contagious fever. Upon her tragic demise within hours of their reunion, they had buried her in an elaborate cypress crypt beside the lake at a location that eventually became the public cemetery serving a growing settlement. Only days after Sarah’s death, Daniel Pluett’s wife had died from the same ailment, after having contracted it from her exposure to the disease while nursing Sarah during her illness. Within a couple of decades, the little settlement along the bayou had become the thriving town of McNutt, Mississippi: the county seat of Sunflower County during a period including the Civil War. The widowers Captain Janes and Daniel Pluett and their children hadeventually moved away to Natchez, before Captain Janes had finally moved to Kentucky, where he remarried and later died. Supposedly, an elm tree, of all things, was growing from the grave of Sarah Janes in the McNutt cemetery, as an ironic footnote to the story. Joshua had never been to McNutt to witness the curiosity of the elm tree growing from the woman’s grave, but he had seen other strange happenings pertaining to the story. During one of his hunting trips into the mysterious western forest, he and Jack had camped at the decrepit old cabin one night, and while there, he had experienced an eerie happening. He had been asleep inside the old cabin, when he had suddenly awakened in the middle of the night to hear peculiar and unrecognizable sounds -- guttural, inhuman moans and gurgles -- coming from deep within the forest. While cautiously peering out into the darkness from one of the open cabin windows, he had seen strange illuminations, which some mysterious light source had been emitting, while it slowly moved through the woods. He had observed that someone -- or something -- was carrying a torch or candle, or perhaps a primitive lamp, while slowly wandering through the trees, ever searching for something unknown. Upon closer observation, he had realized that the entity carrying that lamp was the spirit of the long-dead Red Elm -- his nearly-severed head dangling from the bleeding stump of his neck by a few strands of sinewy flesh -- who was evidently hovering around the place and performing an endless and fruitless search for Sarah Janes. During the nocturnal haunting of the abandoned homestead, Joshua had seriously considered seeking refuge within the gloomy depths of the old cellar to escape from the troubling events occurring above ground. Entering the cellar would have required him and Jack to descend the crumbling stairway that led down into the dark cavity beneath the old cabin, within the heart of the old Indian mound. When they had approached the top of the stairs and peered down into the blackness pervading the cellar beneath them, however, he had begun to hear many anguished, muffled voices, speaking an unknown and long-forgotten Indian language, emanating from deep within the bowels of the prehistoric structure. He had chillingly realized that the spirits of the long-dead Indians, whose remains were buried within the mound beneath the cabin, were calling out from some netherworld, ominously inviting him to come down into their domain and join them. The sinister aura, which the multitude of voices arising from the subterranean abyss had generated, had easily persuaded him to avoid the cellar and remain above ground to deal directly with the lone spectral apparition that roamed the surrounding forest. The duo had reclaimed a spot in a dark corner of the main space within the cabin, with Jack lying upon the ground between his feet, where he had refused to budge an inch. When dawn had finally broken, Joshua quickly gathered his gear, and he and Jack had hastily departed the grounds, never again to venture into that mysterious part of the forest. Joshua had never told anyone about the disturbing incident that had occurred in the forest, thinking that disclosing such foolishness would only serve to verify to others either an overly imaginative mind or a seriously disturbed one on his part.
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About the Book
Celestial Reflections in the Tallahatchie River describes the exciting events surrounding the sidewheel steamship Star of the West. The steamship had gained fame when South Carolina’s Citadel Cadets targeted her with the first shots of the War Between the States, in January of 1861.
The story begins in the Mississippi Delta during the pioneering days of the mid-19th century, when Joshua Thompson immigrated with his family into the region and settled in the wilderness. He matured and married Jenny Delacroix, who was the daughter of a Delta plantation owner. The couple soon had a daughter, Sophie, and the three of them settled on their small farm alongside the Tallahatchie River.
When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Joshua joined up with a local Confederate regiment, and he and his Rebel comrades began a series of maneuvers around the Southeast. In March of 1863, the Confederate command ordered his regiment to trek to Greenwood, Mississippi -- Joshua’s hometown -- to construct defensive forts on the bank of the Tallahatchie River. Their objective was to halt the advancement of a flotilla of Union gunships and troop transports that were steaming toward Greenwood. General Ulysses Grant had ordered the flotilla to traverse the length of the river, enter the Yazoo River at Greenwood and then cruise toward the river’s mouth, where they could lay siege to, and ultimately conquer, Vicksburg: the final Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. The Rebels scuttled the Star of the West in the Tallahatchie River as an obstruction, and after many battles, the Rebels turned back the Yankees.
Joshua lost a treasure in the scuttled Star of the West, and one-and-a-half centuries into the future, his descendant would ultimately lead an archaeological expedition to excavate the sunken ship. The discovery of the lost treasure would intrigue the world.
About the Author
Mark Adkins has begun his writing career at age fifty, after spending the first half of his life filling his creative well. An unadulterated misfit living in Mississippi, he has paid his dues of "suffering for his art," and his work reflects his passion.
Mark's life was instrumental regarding the subjects of his writing. He -- the son of a Native American father -- was born in Washington, D.C., where he lived until the age of twelve. In 1970, he moved with his family to Mississippi, where he lived in the region that his forebears on his mother's side had inhabited since the early 19th century. It was there, while growing up on the banks of the Yalobusha River just north of Greenwood, that he developed a love for the outdoors and for the rich history of the area. He studied architecture and painting for six years at Mississippi State University, and following many years of traveling around the South, he moved back to Greenwood, where he finally wrote a novel concerning a subject that had intrigued him since childhood: the saga of the sidewheel steamship Star of the West.
Mark's first novel, Celestial Reflections in the Tallahatchie River, tells the exciting story of the Star of the West. Mark recognized that the steamship, having been targeted with the first shots of the Civil War, is unparalled in historical importance. He was keenly aware that no one had written a full account of the entire story; therefore, he took on the task to perform that endeavor to the best of his abilities, and after two-and-one-half years, and thorough research, he has completed the historically-accurate novel. Some parts of the novel are descriptive of the tales that his own family elders had recounted to him from their own childhoods.