The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale
Trade paperback format. Highly recommended, my all-time favorite Lansdale book. A dark story, lifted by the spirit of its young narrator, rife with swampy folklore that blurs the line between the real world and the shadows that surround it. Read it!
The Edgar Award winning thriller The Bottoms is classic American storytelling in its truest, darkest, and more affecting form, with 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 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.