by Valerie Fraser Luesse
Published January 2 2018 by Fleming H Revell Company
This was a win from LibraryThing.com for my honest (albeit late) review. Missing Isaac takes place in Glory, Alabama, during the mid 1960s when the country was exploding with racial strife, war protests, and political assassinations. Glory seems gloriously untouched by most of this news, which may be what I felt was missing from a book that is tagged as historical fiction (as well as Christian fiction).
Pete McLean is the only child of a wealthy widowed farm wife, with Isaac being their black hired man and closest thing to best friend. His grandfather Daddy Ballard is now his father figure. Isaac goes missing following a card game and Pete takes it hard, but his efforts to find out what happened (since the authorities aren't doing anything) are eventually forbidden for his own safety. After that it's up to Daddy Ballard to put his money to good use in trying to find Isaac.
The beginning of the book had me absorbed in the richly visual descriptions of the area, where the hired black folk and the poor live in harmony with the Ballard/McLean family on land owned by Daddy Ballard. There are a couple of bad characters thrown into the mix. As it progressed, I enjoyed Pete gaining a new unlikely friend named Dovey, and their relationship is sweet (but not overly so). The main characters are all really nice people, and niceness can wear thin on me, but they were also likeable and interesting if not somewhat unbelievable.
I did not know this was Christian fiction going into it, but it actually was pretty good. I liked it overall, but the first half grabbed me more than the second. My main complaint would be that the Ballard money was the solution to almost every obstacle that presented itself, which seemed like an easy out whenever the plot thickened. Marginal thumbs up.
No comments:
Post a Comment