Dancing With the White Squirrels

In 1974, Harvard grad Chance Albright is named CFO for Bud's Bargain Stores, a five-and-dime store chain based in the small South Mississippi town of Columbia. Chance and his wife Charlotte, a former Boston College cheerleader, learn that nefarious activities carried out by a company employee may have led to the murder of a popular high school student. This discovery places their own lives in danger just a matter of days since arriving in what they believed to be a sleepy, Southern community.

It was springtime in 1974, and Chance Albright, a recent Harvard graduate, and his wife, Charlotte, a former Boston College cheerleader, arrive in Columbia, Mississippi. Chance will serve as the chief financial officer with Bud's Bargain Stores, a five and dime store chain based in the small South Mississippi town. During a party on their first Saturday night in town, Charlotte and Chance, along with members of the chamber of commerce and their spouses, learn of the tragic death of Brent Foxworth, a popular charismatic high school student found dead from a gunshot at Red Bluff. Charlotte and Chance soon befriend Becky Sanders and Craig Ashley, two close friends of Brent's who say their friend did not commit suicide as everyone suspects. Instead, his stealing marijuana from drug dealers who brought the weed up the Pearl River from New Orleans caused his death. While at work, Chance discovers an inexplicable spike in company earnings that began eighteen months earlier. Chance's suspicions, along with his and Charlotte's friendship with the murdered boy's friends, draws the ire of Joe Don McDaniel, a longtime Bud's Bargain Store employee and a key player in both the pot running business and the nefarious activity responsible for the anomalous increases in Bud's company earnings. Joe Don's covert experience in the CIA's clandestine war in Laos during the 1950s and early 1960s makes him a dangerous man to cross.

B. C. Murray is a native of Columbia, Mississippi, a graduate of Ole Miss, and the proud father of two sons. He has authored three novels set in and around Columbia, Mississippi, during the 1970s. The novels Blown Sky High and Intercepted will be available soon. The author's essay, A Boy, the Moon, and Camille, appeared in the July/August 2020 issue of Mississippi Magazine.