Amazon.com description: Product Description: Finus Bates has loved Birdie Wells since the day he saw her do a cartwheel in the woods in 1916. Later he won her at poker, lost her, then nearly won her again after the mysterious poisoning of her womanizing husband. Does Vish, the old medicine woman down in the ravine, hold the key to Birdie s elusive character? Or does Parnell, the town undertaker, whose unspeakable desires bring lust for life and death together? Or does the secret lie with some other colorful old-timer in Mercury, Mississippi, not such a small town anymore? A potent cocktail of Southern gothic and classical mythology, this is a novel only Brad Watson could have written.