In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly
newspapers, The Ford County Timed, went bankrupt. To the
surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a
twenty-three-year-old college dropout named Willie Traynor.
The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was
brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious
Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details,
and his newspaper began to prosper.
The murderer, Danny Padgitt, was tried before a packed
courthouse in Clanton, Mississippi. The trial came to a startling
and dramatic end when the defendant threatened revenge
against the jurors if they convicted him. Nevertheless, they
found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
But in Mississippi in 1970, "life" didn't necessarily mean "life,"
and nine years later Danny Padgitt managed to get himself
paroled. He returned to Ford County, and the retribution began.

PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
After decades of patient mismanagement and loving neglect,
The Ford County Times went bankrupt in 1970. The owner and
publisher, Miss Emma Caudle, was ninety-three years old and
strapped to a bed in a nursing home in Tupelo. The editor, her
son Wilson Caudle, was in his seventies and had a plate in his
head from the First War. A perfect circle of dark grafted skin
covered the plate at the top of his long, sloping forehead, and
throughout his adult life he had endured the nickname of Spot.
Spot did this. Spot did that. Here, Spot. There, Spot.
In his younger years, he covered town meetings, football
games, elections, trials, church socials, all sorts of activities in
Ford County. He was a good reporter, thorough and intuitive.
Evidently, the head wound did not affect his ability to write. But
sometime after the Second War the plate apparently shifted, and
Mr. Caudle stopped writing everything but the obituaries. He
loved obituaries. He spent hours on them. He filled paragraphs
of eloquent prose detailing the lives of even the humblest of
Ford Countians. And the death of a wealthy or prominent citizen
was front page news, with Mr. Caudle seizing the moment. He
never missed a wake or a funeral, never wrote anything bad
about anyone. All received glory in the end. Ford County was a
wonderful place to die. And Spot was a very popular man, even
though he was crazy.
The only real crisis of his journalistic career happened in 1967,
about the time the civil rights movement finally made it to Ford
County. The paper had never shown the slightest hint of racial
tolerance. No black faces appeared in its pages, except those
belonging to known or suspected criminals. No black wedding
announcements. No black honor students or baseball teams. But
in 1967, Mr. Caudle made a startling discovery. He awoke one
morning to the realization that black people were dying in Ford
County, and their deaths were not being properly reported.
There was a whole, new, fertile world of obituaries waiti...

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