Blackwater: The Complete Saga

by Michael McDowell

Annie Bell had an insignificant husband, three insignificant sons, and a girl called Ruthie who was going to grow up to be just like her.

Oscar was a kind man and a good one, but he had been trained to laziness by his mother, and if there was anything he could get a woman to do for him, he wouldn’t hesitate to ask her to do it.

But, torn, pinned, and buried though he lay, John Robert DeBordenave wasn’t finished with Perdido, or the Caskeys, or the woman responsible for his death.

Southerners are an easygoing race when it comes to aberrations of conduct. They will react with anger if something out of the ordinary is presented as a possible future occurrence; but if an unusual circumstance is discovered to be an established fact, they will usually accept it without rancor or judgment as part of the normal order of things.

No matter what you’ve gone through, no matter what you’ve done and suffered, no matter what horrible mistakes you’ve made, no matter what you’ve given up that you should have held on to, no matter what you’ve held on to that you should have let go, no matter what has happened to make you unhappy, you cannot wish for it to have happened any other way.”