My final book for Maggie’s Southern Reading Challenge is Mudbound by Hillary Jordan, a powerful first novel from an author who writes beautifully. We meet Laura, a college-educated Memphis schoolteacher, who seems "doomed" to a life as a spinster until she meets Henry MacAllan. When he buys a farm on the Mississippi Delta, a farm she aptly nicknames Mudbound. Laura has difficulty adjusting to life without electricity, indoor plumbing, readily accessible medical care for her two children and, worst of all, life with her live-in misogynous, racist, father-in-law. "Pappy" makes Tom Ewell seem like a likable good ole boy by comparison.

Catastrophe is inevitable when two young WWII veterans, Henry's brother, Jamie, and Ronsel, the son of the MacAllan’s tenant farmers, return home from Europe. Jamie is battling his demons, and Ronsel must battle not only his own demons, but returning to a world of blatant racism after having obtained respect as an officer in a tank unit that served under Patton.

And as for the "state of the mule", the Mule died. It was put down by Hap after breaking its leg. Page 109.