| Title | : | Follow Me Down |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0679736174 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780679736172 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1950 |
Follow Me Down Reviews
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An elderly dentist who keeps his store-bought teeth in his pocket more often than not. Another man who has "gone sour". A wife who shows evidence of having been sly. A religious fanatic who always has his Bible with him, even taking it out into the field while hoeing. One who spews dire warnings of a hell that is deep and yawning, its maw open wide for sinners.
The characters are made plain. Peckerwoods and rednecks. World-weary wives and mothers. A young man who was born mute and later lost his hearing through illness has been called "Dummy" for so long no one can recall his real name. The vernacular contains so many phrases I grew up hearing, even though I'm in the Missouri Ozarks rather than the Mississippi Delta area. "How do." "Selfsame."
A couple of mentions of blackstrap molasses are made. I remember my father "discovering" blackstrap molasses when I was a kid. It came in a one-gallon metal container like the old-style gas cans. And oh man, it tasted vile to me. Adding insult to injury, it was added to a glass of milk, which I loathed to begin with. I tried to get by on the barest minimum, waiting until Mother and Daddy were out of the kitchen so I could pour it in the dishwater. Or in a large philodendron plant in the room. Utterly nasty, shudder worthy.
Don't place too much value on my 3-star rating here. I read this author's Shiloh and was completely taken with it, 5 stars without even having to ponder. It's just that this one didn't talk to me in the same way. Mayhap I associate Shelby Foote so closely with the Civil War that this one was a disappointment for not being set in that arena. -
Follow Me Down: As a Fire in the Bosom
Follow Me Down by
Shelby Foote was published in 1950. The novel was selected by Tom "Big Daddy" Mathews as The Moderator's Choice For
On the Southern Literary Trail for February, 2018.Since I met you I've been crazy
Since I've been with you I've been lost
You make everything seem hazy
Love comes with such a cost
Have I lost my mind?
Have I lost my mind?
Have I lost my mind?
Follow me down to the river
Drink while the water is clean
Follow me down to the river tonight
I'll be down here on my knees
So follow me down to the river
Follow me down through the trees
Follow me down to the river, man
I'll be down here on my knees
I'll be down here on my knees
Nights avoiding things unholy
Your hand slips across my skin
I go down on you so slowly
Don't confess none of your sins
Have I lost my mind?
Have I lost my mind?
When you're young you always take what you can get
Even bicycles and sprinklers get you wet
Now I know that there's a different way to die
My body breathes
Heart still beats
But I am not alive
Follow me down to the river
Drink while the water is clean
Follow me down to the river tonight
I'll be down here on my knees
So follow me down to the river
Follow me down through the trees
Follow me down to the river, man
I'll be down here on my knees
I'll be down here on my knees
Young love as sweet as can be
TAYLOR MOMSEN, The Pretty Reckless (2014)
Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Proverbs 6:27 KJV
“Later they took him to Jackson and that explained it; he was crazy.”
― The Circuit Clerk, Follow Me Down: A Novel
“Love has failed us. We are essentially, irrevocably alone. Anything that seems to combat that loneliness is a trap-Love is a trap:”
― Lawyer Nowell, Follow Me Down: A Novel
First Edition, Dial Press, New York, New York (1950)
February 19, 2018
Luther Eustis was a God struck man, a Christ haunted man, as Flannery O'Connor might have described him. A Bible reader cannot resist the temptation to compare Eustis' life to that of Job. His lot in life was hard, a sharecropper on Solitaire Plantation. Caught in an endless cycle of his crop's yield ever covering the cost of his crop. Depending on his wife and two of three daughters helping bring in a harvest that would improve their standing in life. He wanted a son, but his wife produced three daughters, one mentally disabled. He yearned for a son, but the one he planted in his wife's womb was born dead. What is a man to do but cling to his Faith? What is a man to do when he remains haunted by an island to where he was carried as a child by a Grandfather whom he revered as a hero, a Veteran of the American Civil War.
Luther's Bible is his hope. It is a Book to which he clings. A Book he would kiss in recognition of his Faith. But there is a time when Faith unravels and cannot prevent our spirit from unraveling.
Shelby Foote has written a tautly plotted novel telling the story of Luther Eustis from the perspective of multiple narrators. Each voice adds detail after detail that paints the finished portrait of Luther Eustis and the murder he committed. It is the perfect structure of this novel, and the distinctive voices of Foote's multiple narrators that grip the reader as it did his first Publishing House, Dial Press.
Follow Me Down, while fiction, is based on an actual murder case that consumed the people of Washington County, Mississippi, in 1941. James Floyd Myers, a chimney painter in Jasper, Alabama, left his wife and children in the summer of 1940, running away with a Works Progress Administration library-assistant, Imogene Smothers. Myers and Smothers left Alabama, travelling to Lake Ferguson near Greenville, Mississippi, where they hid out for two weeks. Overcome by guilt for leaving his family, Myers drowned Smothers in the lake. At first, no lawyer in Greenville would touch the case. Ben Wilkes finally undertook the defense of Myers. Shelby Foote attended the trial. And it is Wilkes who served as the model for Eustis' lawyer Parker Nowell in Foote's novel. Art does imitate life. Wilkes managed to convince the jury to find Myers insane, as did Parker Nowell achieved for Luther Eustis in the novel. Myers was sentenced to Life in prison.
Greenville's Delta Democrat covered the Myers case thoroughly. The newspaper coverage inspired Foote's character, Russell Stevenson, a reporter for the fictional Clarion. Stevenson, who has an ability to whip his readership into a congregation of bloodthirstiness. Stevenson is not above stretching a story to increase circulation. Eustis' doomed lover, Beulah Rhodes, Stevenson called a blonde, though she had been beneath water more than two weeks before her body was discovered. Stevenson merely shrugged when questioned about his description. They're always blondes, aren't they? She might have been.
Although Foote revered William Faulkner as a mentor, a primary influence. Foote could not churn out prose as fast has Faulkner could. He was an exceptionally careful and thoughtful writer. Adhering to a schedule of no more than five hundred words a day. His construction of
Follow Me Down began in an outline of the successive monologues of his speakers.1--I the bailiff (trial scene)
2
3--II--a news reporter (finding of body)
4--III--the dummy (informing of sheriff)
5
6--IV--the murderer (how he met & killed her)
7
8--V--the murdered (life seen backwards)
9
10--VI--the murderer's wife (his background)
11
12--the fisherwoman (life on island)
13
14--VIII the lawyer (defense-plea; man after crime)
15--IX--the turnkey (jail scene)
Foote adhered strictly to that construction, making Follow Me Down a novel that consistently draws the reader into the story, section by section.
Foote once remarked that Beulah Rhodes was the overarching segment of the novel. For this reader, hers is without doubt the most poignant of the voices within Foote's creation.
Luther Eustis and Beulah Rhodes represent those poor Southerners whose contemporary culture has made them outcasts, lacking the resources available to those who observe their trial. Greenville has become a center of commercialism to which Luther and Beulah have n.o access. Similarly, neither have had the benefit of intellectual pursuit as represented by Russell Stevenson and Lawyer Parker Nowell.
Luther's only hope is religion which is actually his own undoing. There is no solace there. For Beulah, sexually exploited since childhood, a factor leading to her promiscuity, Luther is her only hope for salvation, a man with whom she feels protected. However, there is no sanctuary from her past with Eustis.
Ever the perfectionist, Foote was disheartened by the mixed reviews that
Follow Me Down received. However, this novel truly established the beginning of
William C. CarterFoote's success as a writer, this being only his second novel published. For this reader, Foote's novel is a tour de force perfectly portraying the sensation of a murder trial that gripped a small Southern town in the late 1940s. Each voice is pitch perfect. From the Bailiff to the Turnkey. Without doubt Beulah Rhodes will be long remembered as the poignant victim without a chance to survive, while Parker Nowell, a man soured on the world by a failed romance, cautions us that "Love is a trap."
Extras! Extras!
Interested in the life of Shelby Foote?
Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life by
C. Stuart Chapman not only reveals the turbulent life of the author, but also provides literary criticism of his works.
Conversations with Shelby Foote edited by
William C. Carter includes eighteen interviews with Foote.
Foote's original title for
Follow Me Down was Vortex. The source of the title he chose was the Delta Blues song, Fannin Street by Huddie William Ledbetter, better known to Blues lovers as Lead Belly (1888-1949). Lead Belly was best known for his use of a twelve string guitar in his playing. Fannin Street tells the tale of an ill fated romance. Listen to a Blues Legend perform the song
HERE. The song is also known as Tom Hughes Town.
n early July 1934, Leadbelly recorded a song referencing Shreveport’s red light district. The recording took place as part of his second session for John Lomax and his son Alan, who were traveling the South to record music for the Library of Congress. At the time, Leadbelly was serving time at the state penitentiary in Angola, nearly 200 miles from his North Louisiana stomping ground. Only a few weeks after this recording, Louisiana’s Governor O. K. Allen commuted his sentence. On August 1, 1934, Leadbelly was released from prison because of good behavior.
The song “Mister Tom Hughes' Town” relates the story of Leadbelly visiting the Bottoms against his mother’s wishes. Between 1934 and 1948, Leadbelly recorded it nearly a dozen times with slight variations on the lyrics and title. Other titles include “Fannin Street” and “Cry for Me." For a detailed examination of the song, Benjamin Filene offers a three page analysis in his book Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 66-68.
This first recording of "Mister Tom Hughes' Town" offers a few risqué lyrics omitted from subsequent recordings of the song. Leadbelly's earliest biography, Negro Folk Songs As Sung by Lead Belly, published in 1936, acknowledged these lyrics in a brief footnote, but only printed a portion of them. The book also states, "This is the saddest and gayest of all Lead Belly’s songs. It is his own ballad and his own estimate of the most important conflict of his life. He prophesies his destiny and at the same time accepts and defies it. The melody is that of a vulgar red-light song. The accompaniment is the swiftest, most intricate and exciting of his entire repertoire [...]" (176). The unedited lyrics heard in the 1934 recording are:
I got a woman living on the back side of jail
Makes an honest living, boys, by the working of her tail.
Look here mama, let’s go to bed
The kid little boy child was born a man.
An interesting bit of minutiae about the song are its references to local sheriff Thomas Roland Hughes. Hughes served as sheriff from 1916 to 1940. As such, the song combines Leadbelly’s experience running away from home to go to the red light district (circa 1904) with the name of the sheriff at the time of the audio recording (1934).
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Luther Eustis runs off with and then murders Beulah, his much younger girlfriend. The book starts with his murder trial and his guilt is not in dispute. What makes this book entertaining are the character studies and back stories of the people who tell the story of this crime in alternating chapters. These chapters gradually reveal all of the circumstances surrounding the murder. We hear from the murderer, his wife, the victim, the murder's defense lawyer, a reporter and others. It was very well written and the narration of the audio book by Grover Gardner was very good.
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This is my second Shelby Foote novel, and, just like "Love in a Dry Season", it didn't disappoint. This man knows his characters, knows his area of Mississippi, and knows what makes southerners tick, black and white alike. In this one, Luther Eustis, age 51, runs away from his farm, his wife, and his three daughters with a 20 year old girl, spends time with her on an island, then gets tired of her and wants to go home. She gives him trouble, so he murders her. The reader is told these bare facts in the first few pages. Of course, there's more to it than this, and here's where the author gets inventive, telling the whole story bit by bit, through the eyes of jailers, lawyers, his wife, two others on the island with them, and even a chapter by the dead girl herself.
Of course, Luther being a religious man and all, claims God told him to do it, but then again, maybe it was the devil leading him on. But maybe "You're doing this because you're fifty-one; you're fifty-one this month and you are scared. You're scared you'll wake up dead in the by-and-by to find there ain't any heaven, or hell either, and you won't have a thing to regret, much less to hope for."
This one has it all; religion, redemption, guilt, lust, love, and it's told in beautiful language that slowed me down in my reading. Some sentences and paragraphs had to be read twice just for the pleasure of hearing them again.
" God smiles and waits, like a man crouched over an ant-hill with a bottle of insecticide uncorked. " -
Apart from being a fine Southern gentleman, Shelby Foote is a fine Southern writer. Southern words fit in his mouth, and the flavor of a hot summer night or a relentless day in the fields comes across as something witnessed or experienced and not just something dreamed up in the imagination. Foote is a noted and well-versed historian, and his fiction reads with the same kind of authenticity that his histories have. Follow Me Down is my second Foote novel, and I intend to read his others as I find the time.
Written in 1950, this might be a very early example of courtroom drama. When we are brought into the story, the trial of Luther Eustis has already begun. We know he has brutally murdered a young girl, strangling her, weighing down her body with concrete blocks and leaving her in a pool of water on a small island. What we learn, through alternating points of view, are the events that lead up to the murder and how this murder affects a community of people, including the defendant.
It was an easy story to get swept up into, with strange characters that demanded comparison with both Faulkner and McCullers. The border between sanity and insanity seems to be strained and nebulous, and I asked myself more than once which of these characters was in the least stable. If any point is made here, it is that genetic disposition and the overall harshness of life can warp a soul, even one that wishes to be saved.
I gave some serious thought to the title of this book. I wondered if the place to which we were meant of follow was not hell itself. -
I've been spending quite a bit of time lately with lawyers, judges, courtrooms and criminals between my personal reading choices and those selected this month by the group On The Southern Literary Trail. 'Follow Me Down' is noted historian Shelby Foote's novel of murder in a small Southern town, based on the real murder trial of Floyd Myers that Foote attended in Greenville, Mississippi in 1941. We know immediately that fictional Luther Dade Eustis kills a young girl named Beulah by trussing her with concrete blocks and baling wire and sinking her in a lake. The book opens with Luther's trial and closes with his sentencing. In between these two chapters are seamlessly integrated points of view from several of those touched by this crime. Through these various narrators, you will find yourself contemplating much broader themes than murder: the silence of grief, religious fanaticism and salvation, when and how love stops and hate begins, blind faith and fruitless hope, unconditional forgiveness, and the voices of madness. If you haven't sampled Mr. Foote's fiction yet, this is an excellent place to start.
"The house was empty with that special kind of silence, not as if there were people waiting, listening (something lets you know: the heartbeats maybe) - but as if there was nobody there at all." -
5 big Stars.....loved the multi-narrative presentation. Grabs you from page 1. I feel fortunate that I am in a wonderful book group that exposes me to books that are sometimes forgotten. Highly recommend.
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Okay, after reading
Shiloh, then
Love in a Dry Season, and now
Follow Me Down, I am no longer surprised to learn that the late
Shelby Foote was a phenomenally talented novelist. Most of us know him as the Civil War historian whose anecdotes brought so many dead generals back to life in
Ken Burns remarkable documentary series about the war but even friends who know a lot about southern literature often seem surprised when they pick up one of his novels. They already knew that he knew a lot, but Damn! He can write, too!
Follow Me Down is a courtroom drama with Rashomon-ish overtones as the same events are described through the eyes of multiple characters. Foote tells the story with a casual grace, telling us clearly what needs to be told and deftly not telling us things that we should know; nudge, nudge. Know what I mean?
I highly recommend this book and any other material written by Shelby Foote, even his laundry list. I'm sure it includes some seersucker.
My thanks to the folks at the
On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other fine books. -
Some moments you can't come back from.
"This was a brand new different world, and nothing in it would ever be the same — all because of a little man in overalls I'd thought to kill fifteen minutes making fun of, lying on my back with both knees drawn up, whiskey-sodden, relaxed, with time enough even to tell him he smelled like a goat: one last half-instant before the thunder clapped, the world hung still, and everything pointed to Now."
In "Follow Me Down," this moment of passion ignites a May-December fling that will end in the death of the woman, Beulah Ross, but is merely the catalyst for Shelby Foote's excellent novel.
In reading Foote's fiction, it's easy to feel conflicted about his 20-year obsession researching and writing his magnificent three-volume history, "The Civil War: A Narrative" — in the years 1955 to 1977, he produced no novels. Well, you can't have everything.
Foote's second novel (1950) gives us the tragedy and the crime's perpetrator right up front; Luther Eustis, old enough to be Beulah's father, confesses to murdering her. With that information out of the bag, the writer had better fascinate us with his characters and with what-caused-this details. Though his approach might not be as complex as some would hope, Foote does. His skill in recreating the murder, the collision of scarred and impassioned people that presaged it, and the crime's aftermath and trial — the story told by eight first-person narrators — keeps us riveted even without the lure of mystery. God-haunted Eustis adds Beulah to his obsessions after he sees her at a religious revival. After that carnality in the barn, he leaves his wife, and he and Beulah take refuge on a Mississippi island. Thus, in a sense, are connected four people abandoned or cruelly abused. Eustis; Beulah; the mannish Miz Pitts, the island's resident, whose husband fled her and their deaf-and-dumb son; Eustis' public defender, abandoned by his wife and bitter at the world.
Foote cleverly lets the two people central to the tragedy tell their stories in the middle of the novel, beginning and ending with those on the outside looking in: circuit clerk, reporter, the deaf-mute, Eustis' wife, his lawyer, the turnkey at the jail. Though the novel does sort of peter out — Foote probably wondered how he could best end this when so little of the bread-and-butter of the tale was in doubt — it was a fine journey.
Almost all of it intrigues, and is wonderfully told. That Foote's literary hero was William Faulkner is easy to see; Foote might be seen by some as "Faulkner lite," and this is understandable. He, too, created his own fictional Mississippi county and adopted some of the master's pecularities with contractions and storytelling approaches. Foote is more direct; easier, if you will. But I think comparisons ultimately are pointless. Foote was very good, and though he gained celebrity late in life on Ken Burns' "The Civil War," let's not forget his novels. If you read them, you won't. -
Though being known for his books on the Civil War, Foote is an outstanding novelist. Reading the correspondence between Foote and Walker Percy gave me an appetite to read Foote's novels. He writes considerably about Follow Me Down in his correspondence, and I was highly impressed with the actual work. This is an outstanding novel of a very unique character.
The novel's story is told in the first chapter. The bare bones of the plot is laid out, but the rest of the book reveals the layers of complexity of the people in the story. This is what drives the book--the way Foote reveals his characters through multiple narrators. We learn new bits about the characters and the story as each narrator brings his or her perspective to bear on the tale.
And what a tale it is! Most novels dealing with a crime and subsequent trial would deal primarily with the trial itself--but Foote makes the trial a relatively small part of the book. It is the moral and spiritual dimension of the crime that interests Foote.
Foote should not be neglected as a novelist, for he is worthy of acclaim for this work alone. -
Before I launch into writing about Follow Me Down, I want to make sure y’all know who Shelby Foote is. I’ll start with his author bio, because it will either remind you or introduce you to one of the best Southern writers of our times:
Shelby Foote was born on November 7, 1916 in Greenville, Mississippi, and attended school there until he entered the University of North Carolina. During World War II he served as a captain of field artillery but never saw combat. After World War II he worked briefly for the Associated Press in their New York bureau. In 1953 he moved to Memphis, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Foote was the author of six novels: Tournament, Follow Me Down, Love in a Dry Season, Shiloh, Jordan County, and September, September. He is best remembered for his 3-volume history The Civil War: A Narrative, which took twenty years to complete and resulted in his being a featured expert in Ken Burns' acclaimed Civil War documentary. Over the course of his writing career, Foote was also awarded three Guggenheim fellowships. Shelby Foote died in 2005 at the age of 88.
On a personal note, my mother was a life-long friend of Shelby Foote’s second wife, Gwen, whom everyone called Ginny- with a hard G. She was statuesque, blue-eyed, and wore her hair in a grey page-boy before it was chic. The Footes lived right around the corner from where I grew up in Memphis. I am a contemporary of Ginny and Shelby’s son, Huggie, so nicknamed because his given name comes from Shelby’s family line and is Huger (pronounced Yoo-gee.) Best for a little kid to be called Huggie, as far as I’m concerned, and the name sticks to this day. Like his father, Huggie is an artist. He’s had an illustrious career as a photographer, and, after moving back to the states from Paris, he resides in New York City. If you’re interested in Photography, Huggie has a couple of books that you can find on Amazon. He admits to being influenced by Memphis’s renowned William Eggleston, and in my opinion, if you’re a photographer influenced by anyone, let it be Eggleston, but I digress.
I have a handful of Shelby Foote memories, one of which sees him sitting on the porch out at Cottondale in Collierville, Tennessee discussing the civil war with the erudite J. Tunkie Saunders, son of Clarence Saunders, who started Piggy Wiggly and built Memphis’s Pink Palace, which is now a museum. When you’re a little kid, you’re not impressed by much of anything, yet I recall running through the porch of what was once called The Old Stage Coach Inn, before J. Tunkie Saunders bought the establishment and turned it into a country retreat on the outskirts of Memphis. I was ‘at the farm,” as they called it, with Lucy Saunders, my age exactly, and we were making a beeline for the stables. Our plan had been to saddle up Buttons and Bows and ride her down to the levee, but I was stopped. “Claire, sit down,” J. Tunkie said, and I, being obliging to my elders, let Lucy run on ahead and did as I was told. For the next half hour, I listened to these two Southern gentlemen talk about the Civil War as if it were still going on somewhere down the road. Wasn’t a big deal to me then, but it is to me now, and I recall the pair matching wits, comparing notes over tumblers of cool, amber whiskey as the sun set through the pin oaks and thinking one day you’ll be glad you’re sitting here.
Another vision that stays with me is of the day my mother brought me round to visit Shelby in his library. She’d just acquired the first volume of Shelby’s three volume masterpiece, The Civil War: A Narrative, and she wanted it signed. The two of us stepped down three wooden steps into what would have been anyone else’s living room, in the ivy-covered, pitched roof brick Tudor tucked back off of East Parkway. I’d never been to an author’s residence, and at thirteen or thereabouts, I hadn’t a clue what to expect from the man I thought of simply as Huggie’s dad. Shelby didn’t disappoint. Were you to have envisioned your best-case scenario of what to expect from an author in his den, Shelby would have exceeded it. He smoked a pipe, he wore a beard and a vest over his rolled shirt sleeves. His steady blue eyes were mesmerizing, canopied with a thicket of black lashes, his warm voice was courtly in a fluid Southern drawl. He was a gentleman through and through and didn’t let on that we were interrupting him at his work in the prime of his working hour. He received my fawning mother graciously with a manner as though he had all the time in the world.
The world got a taste of the real Shelby Foote, when he narrated Ken Burns documentary miniseries, The Civil War, which aired on PBS in five consecutive nights in 1990. 40 million viewers watched it, and the series was awarded more than 40 major television and film honors. In the show, Shelby wore a pinstriped Oxford and simply told his version of the war as he interpreted it. With more than twenty years of research behind him and a narrative passion that verged on the personal, Shelby Foote, in all his poised authenticity, single-handedly debunked all myth and stereotype many outsiders have of those of us from down South.
It was the Goodreads group, On the Southern Literary Trail, that caused me to read Shelby Foote’s Follow Me Down. I’ll go on and say it: not only am I a Southerner, but I’m a writer, and it shamed me to admit I’d never read Shelby Foote’s fiction. I have no excuse for never getting around to it, other than to say that I, like many, equated Shelby Foote with his Civil War volumes. I’d done myself a disservice, but that’s all behind me, for after reading Follow Me Down, I now have Shelby Foote fever.
Follow Me Down was published in 1950. It sets the standard for Southern fiction at its finest. Set in Jordan County, Mississippi, the book opens with a murder trial, and the reader learns quickly that the defendant has already confessed. Luther Eustice, a fifty-one-year-old, nondescript farmer, got himself into a pickle, when he crossed paths with a disreputable woman, thirty years younger, named Beula Ross. After running off with Beulah to a small island on the Mississippi, Eustice changes his mind and can’t think to do anything else but drown her. Narrated in chapters by a circuit clerk, a reporter, a half-wit named Dummy, Eustice himself, Beulah the victim, Eustice’s wife, Eustice’s lawyer, and the jailer with the key, we learn the detailed minutia of the crime from differing vantage points—each with a voice so Southern and unique, Foot’s feat of writing is showcased for what it is: nuanced, insightful, and chock full of character as to lay bare the hidden secrets of the rural South. It’s the colloquialisms that captured me. An example is when Foote describes a man by writing, “He is the best example I ever saw of a man gone sour.” Politically incorrect at points for this day and age, the reader is gifted with the mental accuracy of a bygone era, yet never once does it pull them out of the story. Follow Me Down is a roughhewn and down-on-its-luck story written with such charisma and aplomb as to fascinate the reader on every page.
I’ll leave you here with one more Shelby Foote tidbit, since I’m being candid. Two years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting the great author and poet, Ron Rash, whose eyes grew wide when I mentioned I grew up in Memphis. The first question he asked was if I was familiar with Shelby Foote. I told him I was, though not as a reader, my acquaintance was personal. The look on Rash’s face as I recounted my affiliation with Shelby Foote was one of awestruck wonder. At the time I was thinking Mr. Rash must be a Civil War buff, but now I know why he had that look on his face: it was author admiration, pure and simple. -
You betcha! Five stars! Because I believe that Shelby Foote has been overlooked as one of the greatest Southern writers of fiction. Yes, yes, I know his fame is all wrapped up in his history books. I’ll read those at some point. I’m sure they are wonderful. I just can’t believe Foote didn’t get more accolades for his novels in his lifetime. Follow Me Down is an unsung work of fiction.
This novel is a narrative told by many characters who were involved in or had access to the murder case of a fast and flashy girl in Mississippi by a Bible toting farmer on a mission from God or the devil. From the reporter at the town newspaper to the murder victim herself, all is revealed right up to the trial of the accused. Written with humor and horror, Foote gave a unique, Southern, perfect, voice to each character chapter by chapter.
This novel is brilliant and worthy of my rare five star “its‘ a classic” rating. The Coen Brothers could make an amazing film out of this book that would rival O Brother Where Art Thou. Of course, the novel would be better. Bravo Shelby Foote! -
My first exposure to Shelby Foote's fiction. I am dazzled. Briefly, there is a murder early on in this tome. What follows gives actual voice to every person impacted in any way to this event. It gave me pause to consider how each of us experience this every day of our lives. Some of us give a momentary frown or smile to a passing occurrence. Happy or devastating. Another person may be forever impacted. There are many perceptions, reactions in-between. Actually at this moment, writing this review, I feel alone.
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This is southern literary fiction for grownups. Heavy, dense and very good. Foote transports the reader to a time and place in the deep south and explores issues of mid life crisis, insanity, the state of criminal justice and religion through the eyes of many different characters. This includes a murderer, the woman he murdered, witnesses and the lawyer to defends him.
This plot method is a great example of the Roshoman effect for those of you into Japanese art and cinema. Absolutely Five Stars. My favorite character happened to be the reporter, for obvious reasons. -
I can't tell you how much I love finding novels written "in the old days" that are written without the biliousness and shellacked censorship so common to the old styles. Follow Me Down is racist, sexist, uncomfortable, sexual, full of every trigger you can fathom. It was written in 1950 by a man born in 1916 in Alabama...and he has no idea he's supposed to be ashamed of that.
So you get something unvarnished. Plus, in this case, a really good novel baring all the best themes of humanity. Culpability. Victimhood (even the murdered girl in this story doesn't really think she's a victim, plus, nearly every main and secondary character in the book would classify as a "victim" today). Fortitude. Motivations.
Foote tells it plain from at least seven different viewpoints, and it's not confusing or hard to keep track of. It's littered with tangible detail that both highlights the era and culture and shows how it is not ours.
Just like the story of this murder doesn't belong just to the people directly involved. Everyone has a say, even us, 70 years later. Foote lets us figure out our opinion on our own, but invites us to pay close attention. It's hard to get the whole story. -
An extraordinary telling of a murder mystery with the backstory from the viewpoints of several characters including the murder victim. Truly outstanding southern historical fiction.
A haunting and absorbing tale, overall. -
Very good read.
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Foote is best known for his excellent three volume non-fiction treatise about the Civil War and for his interviews on Ken Burns' documentary about the war. I was unaware that he ever wrote fiction until I saw his novels on friends' reading lists. Follow Me Down was his second novel. Inspired by a murder in Mississippi in the 40's, it is superb. He tells the story from the different perspectives of multiple characters who have a connection to the murder, including the killer, his defense counsel, his wife, and the victim. Each voice is genuine and struck with perfect pitch.
Foote's writing style is mesmerizing, much like his licorice-smooth southern voice in the Burns documentary. William Faulkner once told a class of students at the University of Virginia that Foote could be an exceptional writer if he stopped trying to be William Faulkner and settled on being Shelby Foote. I admire Faulkner greatly, but I don't agree that Foote is some Faulkner copy-cat. I can see Faulkner's influence in Foote's writing and they write about similar subjects, but Foote's voice and style are unique and he's a great writer in his own rite. I'd have no reservation about putting this book on the same shelf with Light in August. -
Old time Southern literary fiction, unusual story well told.
Artful depiction of a murder and murder trial from the first person points of view of several
characters. Really nicely done and for me, it was a page turner. -
Unusual and compelling. The story unfolds as the narrators tell it, each from their own vantage point. Original and refreshing to say the least. If you like southern fiction, check this one out.
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Wow! Heavy duty southern literary historical fiction. I can't believe I hadn't come across this earlier.
The story of lives and murder told in the first person by several different characters, including the murder victim. Powerful but with lots of subtleties for those who know the south.
A really excellent book, and I won't say any more because of obvious spoilers. -
Interesting novel. Foote starts you out with the answer and backs into the mystery. The story's chapters are organized by the characters' points of view. So the first chapter is the courtroom according to the clerk. Second is the defendant's version of what happened. Then the story according to witnessses and the victim. Finally it is the defendants wife and then the jailer.
This narrative method makes what I call loops back through the story as the characters interact with each other through their respective chapters. For example the chapter according to the defendant will have an interaction with one of the witnesses. We have to go back to this part of the story for the witnesses chapter which has that same interaction with the defendand but a different point of view. Minor repetition, but this unique way of storytelling makes it worth while. -
Follow Me Down is a pretty remarkable novel in which virtually the entire plot is divulged in the first chapter. Set in a small Mississippi town in 1949, Follow Me Down is basically the story a murder. The facts of the case and the chief players are introduced in the first chapter by the clerk of the court. Each following chapter relates the same events, but is narrated by each of the different characters: the accused, his wife, his lawyer, witnesses, even the murdered girl. The nuances and differences in voice that the author gives to each character's story made this book a really compelling read.
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I was drawn to this voice, a southern scholar I heard on Ken Burns' The Civil War. Even after 15 years, I remembered this slow meandering Southern accent--deliver the authentic nature of the Rebel characters described in the series. So, with Google I discovered this voice was Shelby Foote, who wrote the 3 volume set on the Civil War which inspired Ken Burns. I discovered Shelby also wrote fiction. Follow Me Down is an unusual read, closer to art, breaking rules all the way to the end. Maybe Shelby didn't win literary fame because he wrote about postwar Mississippi. Not an easy package to carry to Northern book reviewers, however the characters seem true and live with error and strength.
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This is a story about the murder of a young woman, and the people who are involved in the trial of the accused, a man in his 50s who had left his family in search of a life that he felt had passed him by. There is nothing as foolish as a man who chases his near forgotten youth. There is nothing quite like a small town and the characters who fill it; it is a gift to story tellers.
Foote has a knack of fleshing out characters who are complicated in their very simplicity, of reminding us of a time when people had a sense that they had intimate knowledge of their neighbors. Where people had deep feelings and alternately drawn to both condemn and forgive those around them.
Enjoyable tale. -
And here I thought that Shelby Foote was a Civil War historian! What a finely crafted novel this was, entrancing from the first page, and told in a myriad of different voices. Part courtroom drama, part morality tale, part Southern Gothic, and wholly unforgettable. I’m planning to read more of Shelby Foote’s novels!
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I loved the lyrical style of the first narrator, so I was put off by the concept of the same story being told from different perspectives in each chapter--at first. But as more information and more characters were added to the story it it began to build. Wonderful complicated read.
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Creative twists. Politically-incorrect-historical-accuracy. Excellent-Awful Theology
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Haunting, beautiful, mysterious. At once set in a time and place (1940s Mississippi Delta) and trancending time and place to explore the human soul.
