Brewton Bound

There's always, as Kirk say, a certain trepidation when readying to "launch" a book. I remember just weeks before the deadline of the first one, waking up in the middle of the night and getting physically ill over the prospect. (Everyone's friend Tom Franklin told me at the time, "That's great!" But we all know he's crazy.) Is it good enough? Did I make it bulletproof? Did I do justice by the story? Those are all questions, ultimately, that only a reader can answer. And that's the writer's angst. Murder Creek, of course, presents its own special anxiety. Launching it in Brewton only compounds the situation. We are already hearing from folks, professionals, anonymous citizens, that we shouldn't have pursued the story, shouldn't have opened those wounds again. I suppose I understand the intent of that attitude. The motivation troubles me. The goal of the book has always only been one thing: finding out whatever truth was still discoverable for Annie Jean's children forty years after her death. It wasn't too long into the process that the story became one that had to be told. Suzanne, who's more anxious about tonight than anyone, is fortifying herself with this belief: The only people who get to decide that this story's over are those same children. Period. No one else gets to determine that. And that's the attitude we'll take to the stage of the Brewton Civic Center tonight.