Out of the murky backwaters of the Mississippi emerged the legend of Jack the Baptist. Jack Cowel, disgraced pastor and mad man, drowned his wife for bearing another man's child, luring her to the banks of the Mississippi through the ministration of holy baptism. In this cursed place Jack remained to torment her bastard son with ceaseless prayers, baptisms, and cruel punishments. By the end of Summer 1972, twenty years had passed since Cowel's blasphemy. Most local boys knew the wild stories of the craven lunatic in the woods, or the ghost of the sorrowful woman haunting the river; but, for...