A tightly woven mystery about rural and spiritual life that proves both heartwarming and gripping.
A debut religious novel set in Appalachia mixes faith, family, and medical science.
In this tale, Justice presents an ambitious narrative. The story follows Angela, a live-in nurse from an unspecified big city who moves to a small Appalachian mountain town to care for two elderly women, Grace and Harriet Miles—Aunt Grace and Aunt Hattie, as they insist on being called. In taking care of Grace and Hattie, Angela slowly reconnects with nature, spirituality, and the simpler things in life. But she also stumbles on some darker aspects of the mountain’s history and existence. Just what happened to Maggie, Grace and Hattie’s sister? What will happen to Amelia Grace, a quiet victim of domestic abuse who helps around Grace’s farmhouse? What is Grady, Maggie’s husband, up to? This last question proves the most important to Justice’s book, driving the plot and central intrigue of the story. Grady, the main antagonist, is using a parcel of land on the mountain for a shady government project. As his work gets underway, he waits out Grace and Hattie, knowing he will inherit their farm and a considerable lot on the mountain. Angela (with some help from a new friend, Helen, a fellow nurse from town) decides to get to the bottom of it all while taking care of friends and family along the way. Justice accomplishes an impressive feat in weaving all these storylines together, though a few of them start fading away by the volume’s conclusion. Angela’s spiritual development, for example, more or less concludes halfway through the work. The novel would be improved by extending this thread so it runs in tandem with the suspense-driven story about Grady’s activity on the mountain. Justice’s prose is lively, especially when writing in dialect. The strongest dialogue comes out of Grace’s mouth: “They is lotsa’ other books that say lotsa nice things. But the Good Book is the only one that kills” its hero. While not necessarily true, it’s certainly authentic. This tale should please readers with an interest in both thrillers and religion.
A tightly woven mystery about rural and spiritual life that proves both heartwarming and gripping.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-7143-5
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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