[Applause] - Welcome once again to the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour.

We're coming to you tonight from Off Square Books in downtown Oxford, Mississippi.

♪♪ ♪When you're feeling way down low♪ ♪You got no place to go♪ ♪Can't call a lover, can't call no friend,♪ ♪Can't find your so in the so,♪ ♪Just put your hand on the radio,♪ ♪Can you feel it?♪ ♪Down to your toes, can you feel it?♪ ♪That's how it goes, can you feel it?♪ ♪Lord only knows can you feel it?♪ ♪Just put your hand on the radio.♪ ♪Oh I'm down on my knees,♪ ♪Oh I'm begging you please,♪ ♪Here comes Jim Dees.♪ ♪Oh, no, here comes Jim Dees.♪ - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Welcome to the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour.

As I mentioned, we're at our old stomping grounds, Off Square Books, right here on the Oxford Square.

It happens to be a beautiful, beautiful day today.

We got a beautiful show for you.

Old-time string band, the Delta String Band.

I think the boys are all gonna crowd around one mic and do it like old school.

Or without the old school.

We've also got Prayer Bailey here, North Mississippi soul and blues.

She's gonna get down and get funky.

And as I mentioned, our novel today is "Ruby Falls," written by Gin Phillips, and it is quite the murder mystery, the most unique setting of all time.

And we're in a pretty unique setting here tonight, ladies and gentlemen, and please welcome to the stage our house band.

It is the Yalobushwhackers, boys and girls.

[applause] ♪Well, I knew someday Ruby would be leaving.♪ ♪And she wasn't happy, living quietly, quietly.♪ ♪'Cause she would get that bedroom look each morning.♪ ♪And I felt Ruby pull away from me.♪ ♪Yeah, so go downtown at nine o'clock this evening.♪ ♪Walk under that red line and down the hall, down the hall,♪ ♪Look for the highest flying girl, that's Ruby,♪ ♪And if you wait your turn you'll see Ruby fall.♪ ♪Don't tell her that I don't even know me.♪ ♪She'll be trying to forget it all.♪ ♪Don't tell me how it was tonight, tomorrow.♪ ♪'Cause I don't wanna see Ruby fall.♪ ♪♪ ♪I tried to hold her back when she got restless.♪ ♪One man is not enough when she wants it all.♪ ♪Yeah, I let her go when I saw what she wanted.♪ ♪'Cause I don't care to see Ruby fall.♪ ♪Cause I don't care to see Ruby fall.♪ [applause] Thank y'all.

- Yalobushwhackers, y'all.

Let 'em hear you, please.

[applause] We're delighted to have the Delta String Band.

Am I correct in saying Greenville, Mississippi?

Beautiful, beautiful town down there.

The most recent album from these guys is "Mississippi Bass Fiddle."

Y'all please welcome the Delta String Band.

[applause] ♪♪ ♪♪ [applause] Great job, y'all.

Thank you.

Delta String Band, y'all.

One more time for 'em, please.

Great job.

[applause] Man, I had a fun time this week reading "Ruby Falls," Gin Phillips' new novel.

It is from Atlantic Crime, and we love Grove Atlantic, one of the great houses forever.

This is part of the "Locked Room" genre of mysteries.

That's why I think of "Clue."

It's "Clue," but it's set in a cave.

This book takes place during 1932, and it is just a fabulous murder mystery with great suspects, great dialogue, and a very unique setting.

Y'all please welcome Gin Phillips.

[Applause] All right, "Ruby Falls," the woman caver.

Let's start with the woman caver, Katie.

Tell us about her.

- So yeah, I-- although I knew I wanted to set something at Ruby Falls, and we can talk about the real-life story there in a little while, I also knew I wanted to have a woman caver.

So Google- that great classic help of novelist research.

I just typed in "women cavers" and started looking up what I might find.

And what I came across was a woman named Katie Stabler in South Dakota at Wind Cave, who in the 1890s was the first woman to be a tour guide up there.

She was 18.

And she has her memoirs.

They're very interesting.

But she has one throwaway line about how when she was a guide, she was following along behind a mind reader who'd come for a publicity stunt in the caves, which then sent me on a search for what the heck that meant, and came up with a man, a supposed professor, who swore back in the 1890s that he could find a hidden hat pin in dozens of miles of caves using only the power of his mind and that he would do it while blindfolded.

He was supposed to take a day.

Instead, four days later, he stumbled out bleeding from the head, mumbling nonsense.

His guide died in a sanatorium a year later, and he was holding the hat pin.

So I mean, you can't make that up.

But Jeremiah Hagathorn, who's a fictional character in "Ruby Falls," is based on him, of a real-life mind reader who was definitely a bit of a fraud, although whether the character in the book is a fraud is a little more open-ended.

- Well, now we need to talk about Leo and how Ruby Falls was discovered.

Of course, Leo is an actual person.

Tell us about Leo.

- I mean, the first time, like a lot of you probably, I grew up seeing signs for Ruby Falls.

But the first time I went, I was a full-grown adult just a few years ago.

And you step, and it's a waterfall in the middle of a freaking mountain.

And the first time I stepped out of the elevator, you walk a little ways and they start the story of the discovery and you see a square of rock with a little label on it of where Leo Lambert first arrived at Ruby Falls.

And it's a hole, like it's hard to do this with a microphone, but it's a hole like this big, about 17 inches by 17 inches or so.

And you find out this man raised $250,000 to explore, to try to build an elevator from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain where he knew there were caverns back in 1928.

And in the building of the elevator, they come across a hole that has air coming out, which implies there's something back there.

So Leo, who loves caves, gets a lantern, dives in, climbs for 17 hours, they think he's dead, and instead discovers this waterfall in the middle of a mountain, first human being to ever lay eyes on it.

Comes back, takes his wife down a couple of days later, and names it after her, Ruby.

So the crux of that to me, listening to that story, I mean, being in this world underground, that's been under me my entire life, and I had no idea the whole landscape existed.

I mean, what's really in my head is, what kind of maniac thinks I see a big hole in rock that leads to total darkness, and I wanna go in there and see what's down there?

I mean to me it feels like probably roaches, rats maybe, but I love that.

That was the beginning of the book is just is Leo's fascination with the underground world, his desire to see the unknown and this real joy in a world that's hidden underneath ours.

And so in creating my own character, Ada who's really the kind of heart of the book, that joy from Leo is really the crux of it.

- It's pure genius to to set a murder mystery in this setting.

And I really applaud you for it.

We would like to hear a minute or two of you read it, if you don't mind.

Again, the novel, y'all, is called "Ruby Falls."

It is from the good folks at Atlantic Crime.

Gin Phillips, y'all.

[Applause] - So I'm going to set this up very briefly.

Right after Leo finds, discovers Ruby Falls, Ada, our main character, goes down briefly, gets a little taste for the world underground, but then she sees no other outlet for a way she might explore that.

She kind of gives up on it.

And then one day, they built a restaurant at Ruby Falls.

Her best friend, Ruby, has split her skirt and asked for a backup to be brought to her.

And when she does that, Ada looks around and notices that there's a sign saying to tours, meaning it's the route to underground and no one's around.

And this is, this scene picks up right Right after she's noticed, no one's guarding the elevators.

She also, by the way, has recently lost her husband, whose name is Gerald.

She's clicking across the hardwoods before she makes up her mind to do it, striding through the doorway and around the corner.

She realizes she's heading to the elevator at the same time she sees its accordion metal door wide open.

She glances down the empty hallway.

She should not do this, but she can if she chooses.

No one can stop her, and the thrill of that is so much greater than the fear.

She's still looking over her shoulder as she steps into the elevator, and when no one comes, she moves faster.

She turns to what looks like a tambourine attached to the side of the wall, a simple throttle.

She pulls it, and the floor drops beneath her, the limestone flashing past her through the glass wall.

She didn't expect it to be so easy.

The long drop happens quickly.

The elevator slows and stops just as she's getting used to the feeling of falling.

As soon as the door opens, she sees that they've turned off the lights on this level.

She steps onto the rock floor, and the single bulb from the elevator illuminates the few feet in front of her, leaving everything else in darkness.

"Close your eyes," her father used to tell her when he blew out the lamp at night.

"Everything will be brighter when you open them."

She closes her eyes.

When her parents had company, sometimes her father would look at her mother and say, "I love that woman more now than when I married her."

He would say, "I'm a happy man."

She is not sure either of those things were true, but she understands why he liked to say the words.

A story gives you shape.

She wants to believe she and Gerald were happy too.

One day though, as he crumbled his cornbread into milk, he said to her, "They'll be planting squash now."

And it came to her, he wished she'd stayed on his family farm in Clayton.

She knew it more surely than if he'd announced it.

She knew it from a place truer than words.

The thing was that before they married, he asked what was important to her when it came to setting up house.

And she said they shouldn't be close to either one of their families.

She meant it as a gift to him.

She wanted the two of them to have something all their own, and she believed he wanted it too.

But he wanted the same dirt he'd grown up with, only he never said.

Maybe he never forgave her for it, or maybe he never blamed her at all, but he had a sadness about him by the end.

And if she had daughters, she'd tell them that before you marry, you should talk to the man about what he wants and what you want, and also after you're married, you should keep talking.

No one ever said.

Now, she's not sure how much either one of them talked or listened.

But she laid out his clothes and laughed at his crow calls and never cooked carrots because he hated them.

And it's stupid to wonder about love, isn't it?

When the proof of it was right there every day.

She opens her eyes and nothing seems brighter.

She expected to be able to hear the falls.

There's no sound at all.

She stares into the dark.

The path leads to the largest underground falls in the entire United States, the brochures say.

145 feet tall.

The route is nothing like Leo's original tunnel.

The pathways have been blasted with dynamite so that it's an easy half-mile stroll.

She doesn't like it this way.

If she chose, she could take the elevator down to the lower level of caves.

They say those wild passages go on for miles.

She keeps facing the dark, though.

She has a sense that if she reached past the cone of light from the elevator, her hand would evaporate.

Everything in the world that exists is contained in this patch of light.

She takes another few steps.

Her toes are in the darkness, barely solid.

She likes how the world shrinks here, and it turns out she hasn't forgotten the feel of the rock, the tightness and coolness.

She thought she buried her longing, but it might have been more seed than corpse.

She makes herself turn around.

She pushes the throttle and lifts herself back up to real life.

Ruby's walking across the empty dance floor, searching but unworried.

Ada makes her excuses, hugs a still sputtering Ruby, and takes her time strolling back to the parking lot.

She passes under the street lamp, and hears the soft thudding of moths.

She feels for them ugly little things bashing their heads against the glass.

They don't even know what they want and yet they want it badly.

[Applause] - Gin Phillips, y'all.

Yeah, yeah.

Great job.

Thank you.

"Ruby Falls" from Atlantic Crimes.

All righty, Prayer Bailey.

We've had Prayer on a time or two now, and boy, we hear that voice when we say, can we have her on every week?

But we can't do that.

But we've got her on right now.

Y'all please welcome, Prayer Bailey.

[audience applauding] ♪♪ ♪Lying around home alone♪ ♪On a rainy night like this.♪ ♪Starving for your love,♪ ♪Hungry for just one kiss.♪ ♪Every raindrop I hear♪ ♪Against my window pane, yeah.♪ ♪Be so loud and clear, words can't spell your name.♪ ♪Got nowhere to turn to, tired of being alone,♪ ♪Feel like breaking up somebody's home.♪ ♪I know it's useless, when you belong to someone else.♪ ♪Yeah.♪ ♪Can't control my feelings♪ ♪'cause after all I didn't give to myself.♪ ♪Can't control the vibrations♪ ♪My heart just won't stay still.♪ ♪Got nowhere to turn to tired of being alone.♪ ♪Feel like breaking up somebody's home.♪ ♪Got nowhere to turn to tired of being alone.♪ ♪Feel like breaking up somebody's home.♪ ♪♪ [applause] [drums & bass play in bright rhythm] ♪I miss the arms that used to hold me,♪ ♪the tender way we used to kiss.♪ ♪I miss the way that you touch me.♪ ♪I miss the sweet taste of your lips.♪ ♪I was a fool to ever leave you.♪ ♪You were a fool to let me go.♪ ♪Oh, it's so lonesome, lonesome here without you.♪ ♪Oh, how I miss you so.♪ ♪It hurts, it hurts, it hurts so bad.♪ ♪You were the best man I ever, ever, ever, ever had.♪ ♪Oh, why was I so blind to see?♪ ♪But now the biggest fool is me♪ ♪I miss the arms that used to hold me,♪ ♪The gentle way we used to kiss, oh yeah.♪ ♪I miss the way that you touch me,♪ ♪I miss the sweet taste of your lips.♪ Play it for 'em.

♪♪ It hurts, it hurts, it hurts so bad.

You are the best man I ever, ever, ever, ever had.

Why was I so blind to see?

But now the biggest fool is me.

Oooooh, Darlin' [cheers and applause] You were the fool to let me go.

Why'd you let me go?

It's so lonesome lonesome here without you Oh, how I miss you so.

Oh, my darlin', yeah.

Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.

I don't like that.

[mournful singing] Come back, come back to me.

Oh, how I..... Oh, I miss you.

Oh, I miss you.

Oh, I miss you.

[applause and whistling]