CottonTale

Set in the post-Jim Crow era of the deep south, CottonTale is the story of ten-year-old Peter Clemens and his family who exist in the shadow of a serial murderer-rapist and his crimes that will span three generations. As the adults live their terror filled lives, Peter has an overdue encounter with a bully classmate that proves to be fatal. With the local sheriff looking the other way, he is sent to an aunt in Brooklyn where he is shielded in a false identity to protect him from the consequences of killing his tormentor. Twenty years later, under the assumed name Doctor Enrique Martinez, Peter returns to Campbell County to become its coroner. His days are filled gathering evidence from the remains of the Blue-Ribbon Killer's present-day victims. After work, he pieces together the roots of his convoluted familial background through those who mean the most to him: There is Mamma, who has never spoken a word in his lifetime, but her love for Peter passes on through her gentle smile and touch. There is Gramma and her down to earth words of truth, wisdom and optimism. Through his journal, filled with profound writings of freedom and equality for all, his late Uncle Jess inspires Peter to find a glimmer of hope within the shadow of despair. Guided by Gramma's family stories and clues within the lyrical verse from his uncle's journal, the pieces of his own identity and that of the serial killer come together. From the fresh eyes of twenty years away from home, Peter contemplates: Since the first cotton seeds blew west, the namesakes of Campbell County had been the law of Campbell County and change was not the constant of their universe. Though the laws of America were evolving toward fulfilling the dream of liberty for all, news of that hadn't penetrated the minds of the powers to be who remained stuck in the past. The routines of daily living mesmerized the county's people into a shell of acceptance of their lot in life until a new generation awakened them to the blunt reality that freedom is never granted to the unfree, but must be taken. Though shackles of iron may have fallen from the citizens of Campbell County's indentured limbs, paper chains of blind belief and coerced signatures arrested their spirits, holding them lockstep in a more subtle form of bondage. Peter recalls the time preceding his escape to Brooklyn when one night, the shadow of Earth obscured the moon while evil itself seized that moment and Peter's innocence. He was awakened by shouts of domination as they were met by a silent stare of resistance, when vigilante law showed its ugly hand as the stars in the sky stood frozen when Uncle Jess' rousing voice for liberty and equality was silenced by a lynch mob who refused to let go of the past. From a view of reality that no formative mind should endure, Peter's world of wonder became eclipsed by his inability to save his uncle as he cried out in grief to a universe of indifference. The worst was yet to come when he was forced by circumstances beyond his control to be whisked away to Brooklyn to the most unusual of places; the identity of another.