Matt Roche Roche itibaren El Burro, El Peñón, Bolívar, Kolombiya
I am only 50 pages into this book and I woke up this morning excited to read it. I love it. Final review is that this book did two things for me: it buoyed me up from a depression that was setting in proudly like a Cavalry Stetson, and it made me miss my puppy.
I cannot praise this book highly enough; the story is as fresh and witty as it is haunting and poignant. Haven Kimmel is an astonishingly gifted writer. The protagonists of this book are so real that they practically leap off the page. Langston Braverman is an elitist intellectual who escaped her small-town life for the world of academia, only to slink back home in disgrace after a bitter breakup with her professor boyfriend forces her out of the English department. Amos Townsend is a pastor (described as looking very much like Ichabod Crane) whose lofty theology is wasted on his rural congregation. Immediately at odds with each other, the two are forced to join forces when circumstances bring them both into the lives of two damaged little girls who lost their parents in a violent homicide. The little girls, raised in part by a relentlessly Catholic aunt, believe Mary is speaking to them. Langston believes them and Amos doesn't. Their conflict over how the girls should be cared for, and the unusual family the four of them create, drive this beautifully-written and suspenseful story.
Ack, ack, ack. Lesson, lesson, lesson. And they all lived happily ever after.