To understate it—2020 was not Square Books’ best year. Like everyone, we struggled—but we are grateful to remain in business, and that all the booksellers here are healthy. When Covid19 arrived, our foot-traffic fell precipitously, and sales with it—2020 second-quarter sales were down 52% from those of the same period in 2019. But our many loyal customers adjusted along with us as we reopened operations when we were more confident of doing business safely. The sales trend improved in the third quarter, and November/December were only slightly down compared to those two months last year. We are immensely grateful to those of you who ordered online or by phone, allowing us to ship, deliver, or hold for curbside pickup, or who waited outside our doors to enter once our visitor count was at capacity. It is only through your abiding support that Square Books remains in business, ending the year down 30% and solid footing to face the continuing challenge of Covid in 2021.

And there were some very good books published, of which one hundred bestsellers we’ll mention now. (By the way, we still have signed copies of many of these books; enquire accordingly.) Many books appear on this list every year—old favorites, if you will, including three William Faulkner books: Selected Short Stories (37th on our list) which we often recommend to WF novices, The Sound and the Fury (59), and As I Lay Dying (56), as well as a notably good new biography of Faulkner by Michael Gorra, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War (61). To Kill a Mockingbird still knows how to fly (94), and some other old friends we might mention are Robert Khayat’s The Education of a Lifetime (96); Curtis Wilkie’s The Fall of the House of Zeus (97); Wyatt Waters’ Oxford Sketchbook (29); Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (86); Larry Brown, Tiny Love (57); Ed Croom, The Land of Rowan Oak (81); and John Cofield, Oxford, Mississippi (30). Richard Ford’s books may be found on many of our lists over the years, and Sorry for Your Trouble (27) is there this year and last, as well; and Ron Rash, who has visited us many times, zoomed this year with his excellent In the Valley (46).

In Square Books’ earliest years, our annual bestseller list had maybe two or three local authors. You guessed it—Willie Morris, Barry Hannah, and William Faulkner. This year, no less than one third of the 100 bestsellers are by writers who live or have lived in Oxford, including all but three of our top fifteen bestsellers. One of those is by Richard Grant (who lived in the Delta), whose The Deepest South of All (9) is about Natchez; another is by Alabamian Rick Bragg, Where I Come From (8); and the third is by a very good writer who is not from the South, but happens to be a former U.S. President—Barack Obama, A Promised Land (12). The rest of the top fifteen—all of which were signed by their respective authors—include Larry Wells’ fine memoir, In Faulkner’s Shadow (15); Ace Atkins’ The Revelators (13); John Grisham, with two—Camino Winds (5) and A Time for Mercy (2), both NY Times #1 sellers ; Kiese Laymon’s revised How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (11); Jerry Mitchell’s important exhumation of unresolved Mississippi Civil Rights cases, Race Against Time (10); Oxford’s literary chef-in-chief John Currence’s Tailgreat (4); Lee Durkee’s very winning The Last Taxi Driver (7); Lee Harper’s gift of a precious Tiny Oxford (6); the dazzling World of Wonders (3), presently #5 on the NY Times list, given to us by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, whose signature is as lovely as her name is long; Blackwood (14) by Michael Farris Smith, whose just-published Nick is the first book we are willing to bet will finish in the top 15 of 2021; and, at number one, Wright Thompson’s spirited Pappyland (1), which reached as high as #8 on the NY Times list). Congrats, all.

Following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Black Lives Matter manifested its urgency in many ways, including matters literary, with a doubling of our inventory in related books and a universal surge in popularity of books both old and new on that topic and/or by Black writers, including the haunting memoir Memorial Drive (16), by U.S. Poet Laureate and Mississippian Natasha Trethewey; Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste (42); Black Bottom Saints (100) by Alice Randall; Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy (53); this year’s John Grisham Visiting Writer, Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow (52); Jon Meacham’s biography of John Lewis, His Truth Is Marching On (89); both Sing, Unburied, Sing (45) and Salvage the Bones (82), paperback favorites by Jesmyn Ward; The New Jim Crow (63) by Michelle Alexander; White Fragility (33) by Robin DiAngelo; How to Be an Antiracist (20) by Ibram X. Kendi; and pride of Moss Point, Mississippi, and favorite occasional morning TV guest and Princeton professor, Eddie Glaude, author of the brilliant take on James Baldwin, Begin Again (55).

Regionalism aside, bestselling books across the world found ways to our list, too. New in hardcover, we recently discovered Katherine May’s timely Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times (85); Such a Fun Age (47) by Kiley Reid; Transcendent Kingdom (50) by Yaa Gyasi, who mentioned Megha Majumbar’s A Burning (67) as “a stunning debut”; What the Eyes Don’t See (74) by Mona Hanna-Attisha; The Guest List (69) by Lucy Foley; Lily King’s excellent Writers and Lovers (58); Ready Player Two (65) by Ernest Cline, which stormed the bestseller lists only weeks ago; screen idol Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights (36); The Splendid and the Vile (17) by Erik Larson. The one that just won’t go away is perhaps how rival publishers think of Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing (18), which is fine by us, and there are Jeanine Cummins’ much-discussed American Dirt (19); a couple of fine bird books—David Sibley’s What It’s Like to Be a Bird (24), followed closely by Jennifer Ackerman’s enlightening and entertaining The Bird Way (38); Hidden Valley Road (93) by Robert Kolker; Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half (22); Untamed (35) by Glennon Doyle; Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (87); and, had we been able to keep it in stock it, would be much higher—Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse (23); and, for the second year, Tara Westover’s Educated (48).

Many books on the list last year or the year before now appear on our list in paperback editions. Superlative as a literary work as well as in popularity is The Overstory (27) by Richard Powers, which settled in on the list before it won the Pulitzer Prize nearly two years ago. Other paperback favorites include Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens (90); Circe (54) by Madeline Miller; The Glass Hotel (39) by Emily St. John Mandel; The Nightingale (92) by Kristin Hannah; The Tattooist of Auschwitz (40) by Heather Morris; Little Fires Everywhere (34) by Celeste Ng; The Woman in the Window (66) by “A.J. Finn”; All the Light We Cannot See (43) by Anthony Doerr; Sally Rooney’s Normal People (49); Frank Herbert’s classic, Dune (75); and—who could resist it?—The Liberal Redneck Manifesto (51), by Trae Crowder n’them.

Back to Oxford, and to Mississippi—where we’re crazy for William Boyle and his books, this year it’s City of Margins (41); Wright Thompson’s Pappyland gave quite a boost to an earlier work in paperback, The Cost of These Dreams (25); old times here are recalled by Donald Miller’s great Civil War account of Vicksburg (62), as well as in Allie Stuart Povall’s Rebels in Repose (60); Nico Walker, who’s in the territory, along with the staying power of his Cherry (83); Greg Iles’s Cemetery Road (79); Lisa Howorth and Summerlings (99); and John T. Edge’s paperback of The Potlikker Papers (78).

2020 was nothing if not a year for political books, though one imagines they didn’t do so well sales-wise as a ratio of sheer tonnage; still, these made the list: a bio from Jenna Bush Hager, who generously signed some of our copies of Everything Beautiful in Its Time (84); Bob Woodward’s Trump smack-down, Rage (77); and John Bolton, who was in The Room Where It Happened (73). There is plenty of Mississippian Stuart Stevens’ wisdom in It Was All a Lie (44); and Mary Trump was totally in the room, with Too Much and Never Enough (31).

There are Don Winslow’s Broken (80); Private Cathedral (32) by a Square Books friend, James Lee Burke; Squeeze Me (88) by Carl Hiassen; and another from John Grisham, Camino Island (98); David Sedaris gave us The Best of Me (64) and David Hill, The Vapors; no one knows the Southern Lady Code (68) like Helen Ellis… Off Square contributed much to this list, some previously mentioned as well as Elizabeth Heiskell’s What Can I Bring? (26); Modern Comfort Food (70) by Ina Garten; and The Art of the Host (71) by Alex Hitz.

A delightful surprise for us arrived late this year in the person of Professor Richard S. Balkin, Assistant Chair in Leadership and Counselor Education at the University of Mississippi, with his book from Oxford University Press, Practicing Forgiveness (76), which has had a very nice reception from colleagues, students and acquaintances, and is finding new readers here every day, for who can claim to be above such wise counsel?

Finally, two books we report here with sadness for the loss of their respective authors: My Own Words (91) by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who gave our nation immense wisdom during a time when it was much needed; and Julia Reed’s New Orleans (72), by Mississippian Julia Reed, a dear friend who gave us many books over the years that brought forth her great spirit, spunk, sass, sense of style, and exactly what was on her mind. We’ll miss these two great women, both of whom wrote—and lived—so very well.

Thank you, again, and here’s to ’21!—from all the Gang at Square Books.

– Richard Howorth

(1)

It was one of those raw, windy, dreary Monday afternoons in February when gloom settled over the land and seasonal depression was rampant. Court was not in session. The phone wasn’t ringing. Petty criminals and other potential clients were busy elsewhere with no thoughts whatsoever of hiring lawyers. The occasional caller was more likely to be a man or woman still reeling from holiday overspending and seeking advice about unpaid credit card accounts. Those were quickly sent next door, or across the square, or anywhere. Jake was at his desk upstairs, making little progress with the stack of paperwork he’d been neglecting for weeks, even months. With no court or hearings scheduled for days, it should have been a good time to catch up with the old stuff—the fish files that every lawyer had for some reason said yes to a year ago and now just wanted to go away. The upside of a small-­town law practice, especially in your hometown, was that everyone knew your name, and that was what you wanted. It was important to be well thought of and well liked, with a good reputation. When your neighbors got in trouble, you wanted to be the man they called. The downside was that their cases were always mundane and rarely profitable. But, you couldn’t say no. The gossip was fierce and unrelenting, and a lawyer who turned his back on his friends would not last long. His funk was interrupted when Alicia, his current part-­time secretary, chimed in through his desk phone. “Jake, there’s a couple here to see you.” A couple. Married but wanting to get unmarried. Another cheap divorce. He glanced at his daily planner though he knew there was nothing. “Do they have an appointment?” he asked, but only to remind Alicia that she shouldn’t be bothering him with the foot traffic. “No. But they’re very nice and they say it’s really urgent. They’re not going away, said it wouldn’t take but a few minutes.” Jake loathed being bullied in his own office. On a busier day he would take a stand and get rid of them. “Do they appear to have any money?” The answer was always no. “Well, they do seem rather affluent.” Affluent? In Ford County. Somewhat intriguing. Alicia continued, “They’re from Memphis and just passing through, but, again, they say it’s very important.” “Any idea what it is?” “No.” Well, it wouldn’t be a divorce if they lived in Memphis. He ran through a list of possibilities—Grandma’s will, some old family land, maybe a kid busted for drugs over at Ole Miss. Since he was bored and mildly curious and needed an excuse to avoid the paperwork, he asked, “Did you tell them that I’m tied up in a settlement conference call with a dozen lawyers?” “No.” “Did you tell them I’m due in federal court over in Oxford and can only spare a moment or two?” “No.” “Did you tell them that I’m slammed with other appointments?” “No. It’s pretty obvious the place is empty and the phone isn’t ringing.” “Where are you?” “I’m in the kitchen, so I can talk.” “Okay, okay. Make some fresh coffee and put ’em in the conference room. I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

(2)

The first thing Jake noticed was their tans. They had obviously been somewhere in the sun. No one else in Clanton had a tan in February. The second thing he noticed was the woman’s smart short haircut, with a touch of gray, stylish and obviously expensive. He noticed the handsome sports coat on the gentleman. Both were well dressed and nicely groomed, a departure from the usual walk-­ins. He shook their hands as he got their names. Gene and Kathy Roupp, from Memphis. Late fifties, quite pleasant, with confident smiles showing rows of well-­maintained teeth. Jake could easily picture them on a Florida golf course living the good life behind gates and guards. “What can I do for you folks?” Jake asked. Gene flashed a smile and went first. “Well, sad to say, but we’re not here as potential clients.” Jake kept it loose with a fake smile and an aw-­shucks shrug, as if to say, What the hell? What lawyer needs to get paid for his time? He’d give them about ten more minutes and one cup before showing them the door. “We just got back from a month in Costa Rica, one of our favorites. Ever been to Costa Rica?” “No. I hear it’s great.” He’d heard nothing of the sort but what else could he say? He would never admit that he had left the United States exactly once in his thirty-­eight years. Foreign travel was only a dream. “We love it down there, a real paradise. Beautiful beaches, mountains, rain forests, great food. We have some friends who own houses—real estate is pretty cheap. The people are delightful, educated, almost all speak English.” Jake loathed the game of travel trivia because he’d never been anywhere. The local doctors were the worst—always bragging about the hottest new resorts. Kathy was itching to move along the narrative and chimed in with “The golf is incredible, so many fabulous courses.” Jake didn’t play golf because he was not a member of the Clanton Country Club. Its membership included too many doctors and climbers and families with old money. He smiled and nodded at her and waited for one of them to continue. From a bag he couldn’t see she whipped out a pound of coffee in a shiny can and said, “Here’s a little gift, San Pedro Select, our favorite. Incredible. We haul it back by the case.” Jake took it to be polite. In lieu of cash fees, he had been paid with watermelons, fresh venison, firewood, repairs to his cars, and more bartered goods and services than he cared to remember. His best lawyer buddy, Harry Rex Vonner, had once taken a John Deere mower as a fee, though it soon broke down. Another lawyer, one who was no longer practicing, had taken sexual favors from a divorce client. When he lost the case, she filed an ethics complaint alleging “substandard performance.” Anyway, Jake admired the can and tried to read the Spanish. He noticed they had not touched their coffee, and he was suddenly worried that perhaps they were connoisseurs and his office brew wasn’t quite up to their standards. Gene resumed with “So, two weeks ago we were at one of our favorite eco-­lodges, high in the mountains, deep in the rain forest, a small place with only thirty rooms, incredible views.” How many times might they use the word “incredible”? “And we were having breakfast outdoors, watching the spider monkeys and parakeets, when a waiter stopped by our table to pour some more coffee. He was very friendly—” “People are so friendly down there and they love Americans,” Kathy interjected. How could they not? Gene nodded at the interruption and continued, “We chatted him up for a spell, said his name was Jason and that he was from Florida, been living down there for twenty years. We saw him again at lunch and talked to him some more. We saw him around after that and always enjoyed a friendly chat. The day before we were to check out, he asked us to join him for a glass of champagne in a little tree-­house bar. He was off-­duty and said the drinks were on him. The sunsets over the mountains are incredible, and we were having a good time, when all of a sudden he got serious.” Gene paused and looked at Kathy, who was ready to pounce with “He said he had something to tell us, something very confidential. Said his name was not really Jason and he wasn’t from Florida. He apologized for not being truthful. Said his name was really Mack Stafford, and that he was from Clanton, Mississippi.” Jake tried to remain nonchalant but it was impossible. His mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. The Roupps were watching closely for his reaction. Gene said, “I take it you know Mack Stafford.” Jake exhaled and wasn’t sure what to say. “Well, I’ll be damned.” “He said you guys were old friends,” Gene added. Stunned, Jake was still grasping for words. “I’m just glad he’s alive.” “So you know him well?” “Oh yes, quite well.”

Chapter 1

A hundred years ago, Biloxi was a bustling resort and fishing community on the Gulf Coast. Some of its 12,000 people worked in shipbuilding, some in the hotels and restaurants, but for the majority their livelihoods came from the ocean and its bountiful supply of seafood. The workers were immigrants from Eastern Europe, most from Croatia where their ancestors had fished for centuries in the Adriatic Sea. The men worked the schooners and trawlers harvesting seafood in the Gulf while the women and children shucked oysters and packed shrimp for ten cents an hour. There were forty canneries side by side in an area known as the Back Bay. In 1925, Biloxi shipped twenty million tons of seafood to the rest of the country. Demand was so great, and the supply so plentiful, that by then the city could boast of being the “Seafood Capital of the World.”

The immigrants lived in either barracks or shotgun houses on Point Cadet, a peninsula on the eastern edge of Biloxi, around the corner from the beaches of the Gulf. Their parents and grandparents were Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, as well as Croatians, and they had been quick to assimilate into the ways of their new country. The children learned English, taught it to their parents, and rarely spoke the mother tongues at home. Most of their surnames had been unpronounceable to customs officials and had been modified and Americanized at the Port of New Orleans and Ellis Island. In Biloxi cemeteries, there were tombstones with names like Jurkovich, Horvat, Conovich, Kasich, Rodak, Babbich, and Peranich. They were scattered about and mixed with those of Smith, Brown, O’Keefe, Mattina, and Bellande. The immigrants were naturally clannish and self-protective, but by the second generation they were intermarrying with the early French families and all manner of Anglos.

Prohibition was still the law, and throughout the Deep South most Baptists and Methodists righteously pursued the dry life. Along the Coast, though, those of European descent and Catholic persuasion took a dimmer view of abstinence. In fact, Biloxi was never dry, regardless of the Eighteenth Amendment. When Prohibition swept the country in 1920 Biloxi hardly noticed. Its bars, dives, honky-tonks, neighborhood pubs, and upscale clubs not only remained open but thrived. Speakeasies were not necessary because booze was so prevalent and no one, especially the police, cared. Biloxi became a popular destination for parched Southerners. Add the allure of the beaches, delicious seafood, a temperate climate, and nice hotels, and tourism flourished. A hundred years ago the Gulf Coast became known as “the poor man’s Riviera.”

As always, unchecked vice proved contagious. Gambling joined drinking as the more popular illegal activities. Makeshift casinos sprang up in bars and clubs. Poker, blackjack, and dice games were in plain view and could be found everywhere. In the lobbies of the fashionable hotels there were rows of slot machines operating in blatant disregard for the law.

Brothels had been around forever but kept undercover. Not so in Biloxi. They were plentiful and serviced not only their faithful johns but police and politicians as well. Many were in the same buildings as bars and gambling tables so that a young man looking for pleasure need only one stop.

Though not flaunted as widely as sex and booze, drugs like marijuana and heroin were easy to find, especially in the music halls and lounges.

Journalists often found it difficult to believe that such illegal activity was so openly accepted in a state so religiously conservative. They wrote articles about the wild and freewheeling ways in Biloxi, but nothing changed. No one with authority seemed to care. The prevailing mood was simply: “That’s just the Biloxi.” Crusading politicians railed against the crime and preachers thundered from the pulpits, but there was never a serious effort to “clean up the Coast.”

The biggest obstacle facing any attempts at reform was the longtime corruption of the police and elected officials. The cops and deputies worked for meager salaries and were more than willing to take the cash and look the other way. The local politicians were easily bought off and prospered nicely. Everyone was making money, everyone was having fun, why ruin a good thing? No one forced the drinkers and gamblers to venture into Biloxi. If they didn’t like the vice there, they could stay home or go to New Orleans. But if they chose to spend their money in Biloxi, they knew they would not be bothered by the police.

Criminal activity got a major boost in 1941 when the military built a large training base on land that was once the Biloxi Country Club. It was named Keesler Army Airfield, after a World War I hero from Mississippi, and the name soon became synonymous with bad behavior from tens of thousands of soldiers getting ready for war. The number of bars, casinos, brothels, and striptease joints increased dramatically. As did crime. The police were flooded with complaints from soldiers: rigged slots, floating roulette, cheating dealers, spiked drinks, and sticky-fingered prostitutes. Since the owners were making money they complained little, but there were plenty of fights, assaults on their girls, and broken windows and whiskey bottles. As always, the police protected the ones who paid them, and the jailhouse doors revolved with GIs. Over half a million of them passed through Keesler on their way to Europe and Japan, and later Korea and Vietnam.

Biloxi vice was so profitable that it naturally attracted the usual assortment of characters from the underworld: career criminals, outlaws, bootleggers, smugglers, rumrunners, con men, hit men, pimps, leg-breakers, and a more ambitious class of crime lords. In the late 1950s, a branch of a loose-knit gang of violent thugs nicknamed the Dixie Mafia settled in Biloxi with plans to establish their turf and take over a share of the vice. Before the Dixie Mafia, there had always been jealousy among the club owners, but they were making money and life was good. There was a killing every now and then and the usual intimidation, but no serious efforts by one group to take over.

Other than ambition and violence, the Dixie Mafia had little in common with the real Cosa Nostra. It was not a family, thus there was little loyalty. Its members—and the FBI was never certain who was a member, who was not, and how many claimed to be—were a loose assortment of bad boys and misfits who preferred crime over honest work. There was no established organization or hierarchy. No don at the top and leg-breakers at the bottom, with mid-level thugs in between. With time, one club owner managed to consolidate his holdings and assume more influence. He became “the Boss.”

What the Dixie Mafia had was a propensity for violence that often stunned the FBI. Through its history, as it evolved and made its way south to the Coast, it left behind an astonishing number of dead bodies, and virtually none of the murders were ever solved. It operated with only one rule, one hard-and-fast, cast-in-stone blood oath: “Thou shalt not snitch to the cops.” Those who did were either found in ditches or not found at all. Certain shrimp boats were rumored to unload weighted corpses twenty miles from shore, into the deep, warm waters of the Mississippi Sound.

In spite of its reputation for lawlessness, crime in Biloxi was kept under control by the owners and watched closely by the police. With time, the vice became roughly concentrated into one principal section of town, a one-mile stretch of Highway 90, along the beach. “The Strip” was lined with casinos, bars, and brothels, and was easily ignored by the law-abiding citizens. Life away from it was normal and safe. If one wanted trouble, it was easy to find. Otherwise, it was easy to avoid. Biloxi prospered because of seafood, shipbuilding, tourism, construction, and a formidable work ethic fueled by immigrants and their dreams of a better life. The city built schools, hospitals, churches, highways, bridges, seawalls, parks, recreational facilities, and anything else it needed to improve the lives of its people.