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Death in the Delta 
by Molly Walling
University Press of Mississippi
True crime Death in the Delta by Molly Walling University Press of Mississippi Three and a half stars David Wilson
David Wilson 
The author's father had a severe split personality. On one hand, he was a second world war US air force hero who evolved into a small-town newspaper editor - "a distinct and gifted man", Molly Walling writes.
On the other, he was an alcoholic implicated in murder.
During her childhood, Walling brooded on why heavy unease haunted her home. Then, in 2006, she learned of her father's complicity in the shooting of two black men on December 12, 1946, in her native Anguilla in the Mississippi Delta.
Death in the Delta documents Walling's pursuit of the truth behind a hard-held six-decade family secret. Each of Walling's forays from North Carolina to the delta spawns teasing insights.
After a hearing before an all-white grand jury, her father's case was shelved, she learns. In fact, the killings of Simon Toombs and David Jones were almost nixed from history as the author's father returned to his editing desk.
But Walling diligently interviews a slew of characters, including a 93-year-old black historian, a county attorney and her own wary relatives. Walling exposes how privilege, entitlement, and racial bias in a landed southern family sparked a vile abuse of power.
Under pressure from her family to hush, the author hesitated about going public but decided that facing the truth might promote healing and reconciliation.
Like her father, Walling - a University of North Carolina writing tutor - reports with panache. Whether depicting murky landscape, mint juleps or people, she is peppy. "I loved the smell of sweaty boys fresh from football practice," she writes in one steamy scene. "Firm muscles were outlined under their white tee shirts, and the crack of the cue ball breaking open the game sent a shiver down my spine," she adds.
Has female desire ever been more powerfully evoked? She is equally deft at describing both sex and death.


Daughter's difficult quest to expose a family secret

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The author's father had a severe split personality. On one hand, he was a second world war US air force hero who evolved into a small-town newspaper editor - "a distinct and gifted man", Molly Walling writes.
