The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi

by Wright Thompson

Farming at its essence is just the practice of getting water onto land and then getting it off again, and the eighteen-county teardrop of the Mississippi Delta does this as well as anywhere on earth. On the eastern boundary between the flatland and hill country a series of reservoirs trapped the runoff and on the western edge levees kept the big river from flooding out crops and people. Humans had stopped the natural order of things, halting the patterns that created their fertile home, working with puritanical resolve to harvest the bounty that had taken a million years to create. Nothing about the physical appearance or ecosystem of the Delta carries any of the Creator’s fingerprints. This land is man-made. Not until learning about the barn had I considered the idea that removing God’s dominion from his creation might also remove his protection, leaving this corner of the world undefended from the impulses and desires of man, and the demands of commerce.