Betty Chisolm Hutzler

Mississippi Innocents Betty Chisolm Hutzler

Mississippi Innocents is a Southern Gothic Novel set in the Mississippi Delta at the turn of the twentieth century. It was inspired by the stories of my mother's childhood on a Plantation called Boone Deadening in Washington County, Mississippi. It draws from the rich cultures of the delta, including Black, Choctaw, and her own as a descendant of early English and German settlers. The book is based on these family stories and is woven together with my own imagination, childhood experiences and those of my siblings into one continuous cloth that is Mississippi Innocents. Jackie, the heroine, is a very sensative and spiritual child. Consequently, the book contains many spiritual elements that recur throughout the story. One is a mystical white Choctaw dog that appears often and becomes a symbol and unifying element in the storyline. Jackie and her brother, Allen, transport you through the book with their adventurous life traveling through the Mississippi Delta on foot, by canoe, in horse driven wagons and buggies and on the Yellow Dog Train steaming its way from Belzoni to Yazoo City where they attend school. The novel is warm, humorous, spiritual, and poetic all the while dealing with many serious issues such as black magic, racial inequality, greed, religion, loyalty, courage and death. It contains legends and stories within stories. Some of the stories were handed down from genertion to generation and "no one knows from whence they came". Some who have read it say that it charmed them, reminded them of their Southern roots, made them laugh, made them cry and kept them intrigued from begining to end.