Summary

Just Plain Scared opens with the Reverend bailing his brother, John Columbus Maxwell, out of jail. The day before J.C.’s court date, however, he was found dead on the side of the road. The official analysis claimed that J.C. died of a heart attack, but the rest of the community believed that he “died of being a Maxwell” (51). The insurance companies were becoming increasingly skeptical of the Reverend — in a matter of two years, Maxwell “collected almost a hundred thousand dollars in life insurance” (52).

Eight months after the death of Maxwell’s brother, Dorcas Anderson Maxwell was found dead alongside Highway 9. The Reverend told officials an elaborate story about how his wife went to visit her mother and never returned home. After being acquitted in the first homicide, officials were now “determined to...