Arkansas Traveler

Number 8 on the April 29, 2001, LA Times bestseller list!

Agatha Award-winning author Earlene Fowler has earned unprecedented acclaim for her "compelling" (Booklist ), "brilliantly crafted" (The Mystery Zone) mysteries featuring folk-art expert Benni Harper.  It seems that no matter where Benni goes, she finds a crime that needs solving--and her trip to Arkansas is no exception.  

Welcome home, Benni Harper...  Benni has heard those words so many times since she and her best friend, Elvia, arrived in Sugartree that she's nearly lost count.  She's thrilled to be back--she's finally got the chance to catch up with old friends and reminisce about the lazy, languid summers of her childhood.  And, she can't wait to spend time with Elvia-- who's this close to getting engaged to Benni's cousin Emory.  But she's got a bad feeling she just can't shake...

Benni's used to family squabbles--Aunt Garnet and Gramma Dove are at it again--but there's something much more sinister brewing in Sugartree.  Two churches are planning on merging, but the thought of a racially mixed congregation is just a little too much for some people to handle.  And Benni's downright worried about her friend Amen--as the first black woman to run for mayor, she's taking a lot of heat from a gang of ruthless white supremacists.  One of whom just happens to be her powerful opponent's seriously troubled son.  Who just happens to get himself killed.  Who had more enemies than Benni ever imagined...

My and Benni's favorite grocery store!

   This arch is truly all that is left of the original Blevins High School which burned down a few years before I visited it and where my mother graduated in 1942.  When the war broke out, she left the farm to go to Washington, D.C. to work as a typist for the F.B.I.  The arch just sits there in the middle of the field.

    This is one of the many privately maintained cemeteries in Arkansas.  This one is outside of the tiny town of McCaskill.  My mother grew up on a cotton sharecropping farm near this town.  Many of my distant relatives are buried here.