Delta View, a new book by a new Mississippi author, David Allen Aultman

In 1979, a convict serving time for robbery, Marion Albert “Mad Dog” Pruett, was placed in the witness protection program for testifying against an inmate for a murder that Pruett himself later admitted to committing. In 1981, as part of a week-long crime spree, Pruett kidnapped a bank teller in Jackson, MS. Forcing the teller to drive to a rural area and then walking her into a heavily wooded area, he killed her by shooting her.

This terrible event made the author wonder what might have happened if a skilled hunter had been in a position to intervene when “Mad Dog” followed his victim into the woods. The setting and added storyline came from the author’s own experience of encountering an Indian mound while hunting near the ruins of a Civil War plantation.

Anyone that has visited the ruins of the Windsor mansion or seen Mont Helena, a mansion built on top of an Indian mound, has probably had the same stirrings of imagination about what went on in the past.  Mont Helena has its own, true story, and a splendid one at that, but the story of Windsor, burned after the Civil War by a careless workman, leaves one wishing for more. The Indian mounds, Mont Helena and the Freeland Cemetery near Windsor are ancient mysteries anyway, but the added non-Indian, antebellum use of them just adds more mystery.  Delta View is a fictional story about what could have happened.

The story begins with the Natchez Indians in the 1700’s and ties the earthen mound of those people with the kudzu covered ruins of a Civil War mansion and family cemetery. The Indian mound is the hub of the story, connecting the deaths of an Indian princess and a plantation owner’s wife and daughter to the modern day victims of a serial killer who are young, female dancers at a Delta strip club. Secrets of the Indian mound and cemetery are revealed.

Bush pilot and sometimes covert operator, Deke Desmarais, must solve the murder mystery by first solving a 152 year old riddle and then tricking his suspect into a confrontation that includes wild hogs in an underground environment. Deke becomes involved with multiple love interests and at one point is forced to protect his young and attractive half-Indian daughter, Nikki, in a life-or-death situation.

Delta View, now available for Kindle at Amazon