Getting lost in The Thicket

In The Thicket Joe Lansdale continues his coming of age crime-filled adventures in East Texas some time in the early twentieth century - as with The Bottoms and Edge of Dark Water - told in the form of a reminiscence.  It's great stuff.  Here's how it starts.

I didn't suspect the day Grandfather came out and got me and my sister, Lula, and hauled us off toward the ferry that I'd soon end up with worse things happening than had already come upon us or that I'd take up with a gun-shooting dwarf, the son of a slave, and a big angry hog, let alone find true love and kill someone, but that's exactly how it was.
    It was the pox that got it all started.  It had run through the country like a runaway mule and been especially unkind to the close-by town of Hinge Gate. ...

The pages just kept turning after that.  Review shortly.