A teenage girl fleeing her criminal past finds love and redemption in the Outlaw Strip of western Louisiana.
Now That Should Be A Movie
Short Pitch
It’s called As The Crow Flies.
It is a western romance.
In the vein of Redeeming Love.
It is like Tom Sawyer meets Anne of Green Gables.
It follows a book loving petty thief Missouri Cotton.
And teenage Redbone country boy Daniel Moore.
As they eke out a living and search for love and redemption in the No Man’s Land of Western Louisiana.
Problems arise when tensions between whites and the Redbone people turn violent and some of Daniel’s relatives think Missouri is not a good fit for him.
Together they will prove that no matter how wretched someone’s past or family background, love and redemption are stronger.
The idea came to I started reading Curt Iles’ new book. Having read and written blogposts about his other books and even grown personally from the messages in them, I immediately thought “that oughta be a movie.”
My unique approach would be how the messages of the sophisticated novels like Les Misérables that Missouri likes to read share much in common with the unassuming back wood folk of western Louisiana.
A set piece would be at a bonfire on May Day. All the boys and men are jumping over the fire. Missouri has just learned that all the letters that she had written Daniel had been hidden from him by a family member. She has now realized her sadness and anger toward him were misplaced. Before anyone can stop her, she runs and jumps over the fire. “Feet don’t fail me now,” she yells as the flames leap up and singe her dress. As she comes down for a landing on the other side of the fire, she falls right into the arms of Daniel. “Girl, you are some kind of crazy,” he says. All is forgiven.
Target audiences would be men and women, 30 to 80 years old, fans of westerns and period romances, faith-based viewers, and Louisianans.
People would want to see it due to the themes of love, redemption and grace as well as its western and period piece settings.
Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie is As The Crow Flies: The Westport Flies, third book in the Westport Trilogy, by Curt Iles from Creekbank Stories.
Like Iles’ other books it takes place in the No Man’s Land / Neutral Ground / Outlaw Strip of western Louisiana. Unk and Joe and Eliza Moore and the mixed-race Redbone people from Wayfaring Stranger are back. Joe now runs a store, Hatch and Moore General Merchandise, in Westport. Sadly, Eliza is dying of tuberculosis. Mayo from A Good Place has married and moved away.
As the Crow Flies introduces a new protagonist, Missouri Cotton, a teenage girl who does not know her real name or age. Her family is one of thieves and cons. Consisting of her father and mom and their cat Tom-Claws, they are going by their latest summer name, aliases, as they flee to Texas from angry mobs that “Mr. Cotton” has swindled. Their escape route takes them across the Calcasieu River into the wilderness of No Man’s Land. As they enter this untamed frontier, they are greeted by a sign bearing a message from Dante’s Inferno, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”
Despite the foreboding entrance, their journey into No Man’s Land turns out to be a twofold blessing. First, because the inhabitants of the area, the Redbones, have a fierce reputation of hostility toward outsiders, bounty hunters will not pursue the Cottons across “The Deadline” made by the Calcasieu River. Secondly, as they are heading west they encounter a family heading east. The family is fleeing the area after burying two children. A nest of copperheads also taken over their homestead. With no doctors in the area, the family fears that their newborn baby will also die from sickness that ails it. Mrs. Cotton is a Melungeon, a mixed-race group descended from Portuguese pirates, African American slaves and Native Americans who inhabit the back hollers of Appalachia. The gift of healing had been passed down from female family members to her. After saving the baby, the family gives the Cottons the land deed to their homestead near Sugartown, known as the “Queen City of the Frontier.” Perhaps Missouri and her family can settle down and live a normal life.
The family is unable to make it to Sugartown when their wagon breaks down on Ten Mile Creek. It is here that Missouri meets Unk who becomes her guardian angel due to the presence of a turpentine camp. The turpentine camps of the southeast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were much like the gold mine towns of the American west. They attracted rough and shady characters desperate to make a buck. Instead of digging for gold, the turpentiners would bleed the trees of their gum and pine resin for use in the creation of turpentine and rosin. After draining the area of those natural resources, the turpentiners would leave one bust town for another boomtown. Unk made sure Missouri came to no harm from these transient characters by escorting her to Westport.
At the Hatch and Moore Store Missouri meets a young man named Daniel Moore, son of Joe and Eliza. She also meets a three-legged dog named Lucky. She learns that the locals already have a nickname for her: Wagon Girl. She learns of the simmering tension between the Redbones of No Man’s Land and outsiders, especially the logging companies and their surveyors. Despite being married to a Redbone, some of this hostility is extended to the Irish immigrant Joe. He waves an American flag outside the store to remind the Redbones that they are still in America
Missouri is similar to the character of Anne Shirley from the books by L. M. Montgomery. She pursues education at the historical Professor W. H. Baldwin’s Sugartown Academy for Males and Females. She has female quarrels with prissy girls. Some look down on her because of her dark Melungeon skin or because she is poor. One even frames her for stealing money from the Hatch and Moore store. Like Anne of Green Gables, she has an adventurous spirit and a wild imagination. She loves to read, sometimes devouring the same book over and over again. She likes giving different people nicknames after the characters in her favorite book, Les Misérables. She names the bounty hunter tracking them Javert after the police officer who hounded Jean Valjean, the main character of Victor Hugo’s book.
Missouri’s character journey and arc is similar to that of Jean Valjean. Like him, she is trying to leave her past behind. But as Joe Moore says, most of the desperate people fleeing to No Man’s Land to make a fresh start usually end up dragging their past with them. Like Valjean, Missouri is trying to put the shame of her past crimes behind her. Joe Moore is similar to the priest in Les Mis who forgave Valjean for stealing candle sticks. When he catches her stealing tobacco for her pap, instead of getting the law involved, he gives her a job. Part of the job includes cleaning for and reading to Eliza as she slowly wastes away from TB.
Because of the grace that the Moores showed her, Missouri decides she will no longer steal for her family, defying her pap. He gets revenge in the worst possible way: By telling her the truth in unlove. The man and woman she had known all her life as pap and ma were really her grandparents. The girl she had known as her older sister and had died in New Orleans was really her mother. Now Missouri must put the shame and pain behind her.
Missouri’s healing journey takes her throughout western Louisiana and to Alexandria and back. Accompanying her on this journey is Unk and the Moore family. Like in Iles’ other books, there are many lessons taken from nature. After an ice storm knocks down several trees that looked strong outwardly but were rotten on the inside, Missouri learns that the way to weather life’s storm is by being strong on the inside. The omen of crows plays a central role in the story.
For a moment it looks as if Missouri is about to put the pain and shame behind, but then the Westport Fight occurs. As was mentioned earlier, there were mounting tensions between the Redbone Insiders and the white Outsiders. The recipe for disaster included sheep grazing, land ownership, squatters’ rights, timber surveys, feuding families and plain out mistrust of outsiders. “Outsider” Joe Moore only stirred the pot by breaking up fist and knife fights from occurring on his store’s gallery.
Wood was thrown on the fire under the pot during a horse race. The race had riders representing the Insiders and the Outsiders. Of course, Missouri’s “pap” was collecting bets. The race ended with the rider representing the Redbones as the winner, but there were cries of cheating. The reins of the Outsider’s horse had been cut nearly in two.
These tensions would overboil on December 24, 1881. The Westport Fight, as it came to be known, pitted Redbones against whites. The Hatch and Moore General Merchandise was the battleground. In an ironic twist, the Insider Redbones were on the outside besieging the Outsider whites inside the store. The fight involved about a dozen men. When it was over, three would be dead and one wounded.
The Outsiders inside the store were able to hold their own due to the store’s inventory of ammunition. Many of the men were veterans of the War Between the States and had the training and experience of fighting in previous battles. The Redbones were descendants of Marion’s Men, the guerillas who had fought with Francis Marion, The Swamp Fox, during the American Revolution. Marion’s method of guerrilla fighting and sniping had been passed down through the generations. The Redbone women hid behind trees just out of range of the flying lead, encouraging their men to continue their attack. Indian whoops, rebel yells and Gaelic war cries added to the din of a Wild West shootout.
The Whites would eventually win the battle when an African American man named Uncle Rube brought reinforcements from the turpentine camp. Despite winning the battle, the Outsiders lost the war. Many fled back across the Calcasieu before mobs of Redbones could burn them out during the night. Those that stayed would eventually see their homes burned. Joe Moore tried to wait out the hostile atmosphere because he had married into the Redbones, but even he would be forced to take up stakes after his store, gristmill and other properties were burned. As Iles has said, it was the only “war’ the indigenous Americans won.
An emotional set piece would be Joe Moore saving his American flag from the fire. When the flames lick the flag, he pulls it down, throws it on the ground and uses his hands to put out the sparks burning the sides. When he sets up store at his next location, he hoists the flag, singed sides and all.
Missouri would find herself in the thick of the fighting. Despite her Melungeon heritage, the Redbones count her among white Outsiders when she is trapped in the store. During the fight, she drags injured men inside, helps dress their wounds and gives them whisky. She even practiced her own method of healing, praying Bible verses over the wounds. She carries water to refresh the men as they engage in the fight. Then she cuts the reins of the horses tied out front and shoos them away so that they will not be caught in the crossfire. Finally, she is the one who goes to the turpentine camp to fetch Uncle Rube and the other turpentiners who come to the rescue.
The worst part for Missouri though is her new reputation. No longer is she known as Wagon Girl. Now she is known as The Westport Fight Girl. She must continue her journey to put more of her past behind her.
Accompanying Missouri on her journey is Daniel Moore. He works at the store and drives the wagon whenever Missouri and Eliza need to go someplace, like the time his mother has to go to Alexandria to visit medical professionals. While in “Alex” Missouri is spotted by a man who was a victim of her pap’s swindles. He takes his anger out on her, dragging her down a dead-end alley and throwing her to the ground. He is about to assault her when Dan Moore whacks an axe handle over his head.
Later in the story Dan goes to live with his brother Mayo and his wife Ophelia. She writes Dan several letters, but never hears back from him. She is hurt and angry, identifying with Cosette from Les Misérables, lost and trying to find her way in the world.
But then Mayo pays his family a visit. When he stops by his father’s new store where Missouri works, he gives her a bag of letters. His wife Ophelia had been hiding them because she did not want Missouri associating with them due to her poverty and criminal history.
Later, the Irish-blooded families are celebrating May Day by lighting bonfires. Whiskey is involved, so many of the boys and men engage in the game of Jumping The Fire. When no one is watching, Missouri decides to give it a try. Before anyone can stop her, she runs and leaps over the fire. The flames leap up, singeing her dress. Then she falls right into the arms of Dan Moore. “Girl,’ he says. “You are some kind of crazy.” All is forgiven.
As The Crow Flies is great material for a movie or miniseries. It is a unique look into a forgotten place and a different time. As the “redhaired stepchild” of the state, Western Louisiana is sparsely developed, and with the presence of Kisatchie National Forest, there are plenty of locations for filming a period piece set on the frontier. Iles’ book is a combination of the Western Action and Period Romanic genres, so a movie or TV miniseries would attract men who enjoy John Wayne movies and Louis L’Amour books and women who read Francine Rivers’ novels and Janette Oke’s Heart and Love series.
Crow Flies is a look into a bygone era and culture. When the Cottons finally make it to Sugartown, there’s a mud daubing bee that fixes the chimney at their homestead. There are revivals, squirrel hunting, sheep herding, cattle drives, and encounters with rabid foxes and copperheads. There are the famous Sugartown watermelons. There’s the history of the feuds and violance that plagued No Man’s land. Mr. Cotton is a combination of Huck’s Pap, drunk and abusive, and the Duke and the King, shrewd and cunning, from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. One of his cons involves the infamous Louisiana Lottery. More than once Joe Moore’s grace is compelled to rescue Pap Cotton from an old fashion lynching.
Crow Flies shares history in common with that of my family. My grandfather was a logger, so I would like to see the lumber industry, the common, hardworking men in its employment and their contribution of the growth and greatness of America honored. One way a film adaptation of Crow Flies could honor these men would be the turpentine camp. Another would be the postmaster character who has sawmill fingers. Meaning he is missing some.
Another incident similar to my family history is the final climatic scene on the banks of the Sabine River. When my grandfather, who lived on the Texas side of the river, was courting my grandmother, who lived on the Louisiana side, he would swim the dark muddy waters to see her. One day during floodtide he was caught up in rapids and nearly drowned. Without giving away too much, let’s just say that the final chapter of Crow Flies reconstructs that scene, just with the genders reversed.
Because it is an exciting and romantic tale that honors the hardworking men and women who made this country great is why I think that As The Crow Flies by Curt Iles should be a movie filmed in Louisiana.
