Bitterroot Landing

Bitterroot Landing introduces Jael, born into a hard life, but a survivor. She will survive even River Bill. The almost impersonal kindness of strangers will rescue her; a priest with a good heart will shelter and teach her; a careful man will take his time and love her back into the world.

Voices have always spoken to Jael in her mind, and some of what they have told her to do has been frightening. But the voices she hears now speak of comfort and courage, teaching her to master the ways other people manage to live. Jael has a job now, cleaning in a church, and a room of her own in the church's basement. As she dusts the statue of the Virgin Mary, the Virgin speaks peace to her. "There's definitely too much hurt around here," she says.

"In flaws, you find the truth," says the small, dark figure of a woman Jael sculpts out of wax.

"Come and look at the moon," says the homeless woman she meets at the Laundromat.

"Hello, I'm an incest survivor," say the women in the recovery group that meets every week in the church, just the other side of Jael's room.

Voices both real and imagined make Jael stronger every day, until she finds she no longer needs them. Until she finds that at last she has a voice of her own.

The Rapture of Canaan

At the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind, Grandpa Herman makes the rules for everyone, and everyone obeys, or else. But even in this isolated community where it seems nearly everything is forbidden, temptation occasionally touches the congregation . . . and for Ninah, temptation comes in the form of her prayer partner, James. Ninah is determined not to sin with James---so determined that she's willing to fill her shoes with shells to keep her mind on Jesus' pain.

Nevertheless, she soon finds herself pregnant. She fears the wrath of Grandpa Herman, the church members, and God Himself. But the events that follow show Ninah that God's was are more mysterious than even Grandpa Herman can understand...

A Gracious Plenty

In the lush and isolated cemetery of a small Southern town, Finch Nobles, the narrator of this brilliantly inventive novel, tends to the flowers and shrubs that surround the monuments of people who were not known to her while they lived but who in death have become her lifeline.

Badly burned in a household accident when she was just four, Finch grows into a courageous and feisty loner. She eschews the pity and awkward stares of the people of her hometown and discovers that if she listens closely enough, she can hear the voices of those who have gone before. Finally, when she speaks, they answer back, telling their stories in a remarkable chorus of regrets, explanations, and insights. But the infant Marcus, son of the town's mayor, died before he learned to speak and can only wail away the hours. The roots of his anguish are revealed in a crescendo of lasting resonance that ties together the outcast Finch, her dead friends, and the living community outside the cemetery's gates.

With prose that is spare, yet richly poetic, Sheri Reynolds creates a vision of a world that is at once fantastic and palpably real. She teaches us that neither our capacity to suffer nor our ability to be healed ends with the graveÑand that love is all we have. A Gracious Plenty is a reading experience you will not soon forget.

Firefly Cloak

When 8-year old Tessa Lee and her brother, Travis, are abandoned in a campground by their desperate mother and her boyfriend of the moment, their mother leaves them only two things: a phone number printed in Magic Marker on Travis's back and her favorite housecoat, printed with tiny fireflies, that she places over her sleeping children. The phone number belongs to the children's grandparents, who are notified by the police and come for them. For Tessa Lee the housecoat becomes totemic, a cloak that provides a connection to the past and the beautiful mother she lost.

When word arrives many years later that Tessa Lee's mother has been spotted working at a pavilion on a seaside boardwalk, the teenager sets off on a dangerous and desperate journey to try to recover what it is she has lost.

Steeped in the rich tradition of Southern writers like Carson McCullers and Sue Monk Kidd, The Firefly Cloak is a vivid coming-of-age novel about family, loss, and redemption.

The Sweet In-Between

Living with her father's girlfriend, Aunt Glo, Kenny is approaching 18 and facing the possibility of being kicked out with a sense of impending doom.

When their neighbor, habitually drunk Jarvis Stanley, accidentally kills a college girl, Kenny becomes fixated on the tragedy.

Meanwhile, Aunt Glo struggles with painkiller addiction while raising her own kids, 12-year-old Quincy and teenaged Tim-Tim, and her runaway daughter's seven-year-old, Daphne. Kenny makes a fascinating, cagey narrator, revealing an unexpectedly dangerous family dynamic with a matter-of-factness that belies her fear and anger, and Reynolds weds expository memories with Kenny's day-to-day so seamlessly, it looks easy.

Simple prose rich with subtext, convincing dialogue and a fascinating protagonist combine to produce a heartstring-plucker that's explicit, tender, sad and hopeful.

The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb

Myrtle T. Cribb, a special-needs teacher from Virginia's Eastern Shore, is captive in a dysfunctional marriage. Tired of living up to her husband's and everyone else's standards, Myrtle impulsively heads to wherever the road will take her. But soon she gets a surprise of her own. She finds an unlikely stowaway on her journey: Hellcat, the local drunk.

Together, they embark on a pilgrimage that takes them everywhere from a shady highway motel to a hippie retreat center, developing an unlikely friendship while finding wisdom in the most unlikely places. The journey forces Myrtle to evaluate her marriage, her priorities, and her own prejudices, and compels her to share her hard-earned insights with other women who feel some dissatisfaction in their lives.

With its iconoclastic, complex, and irresistible cast of characters, and bold yet sincere advice, The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb is an engaging, heartbreaking, and joyful story to be cherished by those seeking an understanding of life's greatest mysteries.

The Tender Grave

THE TENDER GRAVE is a gripping story of two estranged sisters who find their unlikely way toward forgiveness—and each other—through a gruesome and disturbing set of circumstances.

 At age 17, Dori participates in a hate crime against a gay boy from her school and runs away to escape prosecution—and her own harrowing childhood. In her pocket, she carries the address of an older, half-sister she’s never met. She has no idea that her sister, Teresa is married to another woman, or that Teresa and Jen have tried and failed repeatedly to start their own family though unsuccessful insemination attempts. When Dori and Teresa finally meet, they’re forced to confront that, while they don’t like or really even understand one another, they are inextricably bound together in ways that transcend their differences. Together, the sisters discover that shifting currents of family and connection can sometimes run deeper than the prevailing tides of abandonment and estrangement.

In THE TENDER GRAVE, Sheri Reynolds weaves complex themes of parenting, forgiveness, guilt, and accountability into a lyrical and lushly-woven tapestry that chronicles our enduring search for home, heart, and healing.