A Book Report on Willie Morris' Good Old Boy

Essay by Anonymous UserHigh School, 11th gradeA+, January 1997

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The book that I chose to read was written by the Mississippi author Willie Morris. The book, Good Old Boy, was written in 1971 and takes place in the small Mississippi town of Yazoo City. The book contains experiences of the author's childhood in this small town.

The story began by telling many of the legends of Yazoo City. One of these legends involved a woman who lived by the Yazoo river. She supposedly lured fishermen to her house to kill and bury them in the woods never to be found again. The sheriff eventually found out about her and chased her through the woods into quicksand where she sank and died. Before she was completely under the sand she vowed to return twenty years later to have revenge on the town on May 25, 1904. Her body was retrieved from the quicksand and buried with a giant chain around her grave.

On May 25, 1904 the whole town was engulfed in flames. Everything was destroyed in this blaze. The next day, some citizens went to her grave and to their horror the chain had been broken. Another legend was one about Casey Jones, a famous train engineer who was killed while saving his passengers lives. The last legend mentioned was about a race of giant Indians who supposedly lived on the land that Yazoo City was built on.

Next, the book told about the childhood life of the author, Willie Morris. Willie, his dog Skip, and friends had many exciting adventures together in that small town. They ranged from school day pranks to having saved the town from a band of thieves.

They usually spent a lot of their time in Bubba's Model A Ford. Bubba was about eleven or twelve and had a car. They...