by Wiley Cash
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This would be my least favorite book from the Wiley Cash repertoire. I adored his others. I set this aside before after only one chapter, thinking I'd finish it another day. That day came when my book club made it our March selection. Then during this attempt at it, I swore at the 50% mark I could go no further. But for the sake of my book club, I skimmed a couple of chapters and it picked up again with about 150 pages remaining. Thankfully, those final pages were (for me) the best of the entire book, go figure. Action packed, emotional, and nicely wrapped up.
What I didn't love was that the chapters jumped around from new character to new character, and also from past to present. Just as I felt a rhythm in my reading, someone I never heard of would show up, interrupting the flow. This is something I find jarring in any book, and as I get older it becomes more difficult to adjust to. Also problematic is that I didn't particularly care for Ella May, the heroine of the book. I should have felt more empathy for her and her situation, I know. But instead, I felt Cash gave us someone emotionally distant and rather cold. She seemed to glide much too easily from struggling single working mother to activist, without a sense of any inner struggles or conflicted feelings.
These are solely my opinions, and unpopular ones at that, given the high ratings on goodreads. So if you are one who doesn't mind time shifts and changing points of view from too many characters to count, go for it. Especially if you're already a Cash fan, you owe it to yourself to give it a try
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