It’s been over ten years since I’ve read one of Darryl Wimberley’s novels, but he still has a magical way of capturing northern Florida. His descriptions bring a failing rural community to life in Post Facto.
When Clara Sue Buchanan lost her column in a Boston newspaper, she moved home to Laureate, Florida, a small rural community in northern Florida. She bought the local newspaper. Now, instead of hard-hitting investigations, she covers high school football games and stories of visions of dead people and little green men.
However, two brothers catch Clara Sue’s attention. Hiram and Roscoe Lamb are powerful landowners in Laureate and the surrounding county. They detest their foster brother, and have always made his life miserable. They want to use federal grant money to improve the local school, while closing their foster brother’s candy story. Their hatred of Butch McCray goes back to the time when Butch’s mother married the Lambs’ father after the accidental shooting death of her abusive husband. She married Lamb, and two months later committed suicide.
Clara Sue has to tread lightly. Hiram Lamb is her biggest advertiser, and she doesn’t want to offend him. However, she wants to dig into past history. There are secrets in Laureate, stories of failed farms and foreclosures. But, a dependent newspaper owner isn’t as independent as Buchanan would like. In Laureate, visions, ghosts and murder are sometimes best left alone.
The descriptive Post Facto is a suspenseful story, with an atmosphere as rich as those in Larry Sweazy’s novels.
Darryl Wimberley’s website is www.darrylwimberley.com
Post Facto by Darryl Wimberley. The Permanent Press, 2018. ISBN 9781579625559 (hardcover), 248p.
*****
FTC Full Disclosure – I received the book to review for a journal.
