Yes, my review will happen later. I will be so glad when the summer comes and I can truly get caught up on all the books I need to read!
Sweet Mercy
Stunning coming-of-age drama set during the Great Depression and Prohibition
When Eve Marryat’s father is laid off from the Ford Motor Company in 1931, he is forced to support his family by leaving St. Paul, Minnesota, and moving back to his Ohio roots. Eve’s uncle Cyrus has invited the family to live and work at his Marryat Island Ballroom and Lodge.
Eve can’t wait to leave St. Paul, a notorious haven for gangsters. At seventeen, she considers her family to be “good people,” not lawbreakers like so many in her neighborhood. Thrilled to be moving to a “safe haven,” Eve soon forms an unlikely friendship with a strange young man named Link, blissfully unaware that her uncle’s lodge is anything but what it seems.
When the reality of her situation finally becomes clear, Eve is faced with a dilemma. Does she dare risk everything by exposing the man whose love and generosity is keeping her family from ruin? And when things turn dangerous, can she trust Link in spite of appearances?
Barnes & Noble * Amazon * Bethany House
Ann Tatlock
Ann Tatlock is the author of the Christy-Award winning novel Promises to Keep. She has also won the Midwest Independent Publishers Association “Book of the Year” in fiction for both All the Way Home and I’ll Watch the Moon. Her novel Things We Once Held Dear received a starred review from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly calls her “one of Christian fiction’s better wordsmiths, and her lovely prose reminds readers why it is a joy to savor her stories.” Ann lives with her husband and daughter in Asheville, North Carolina.
Enjoy an excerpt:
My old life drifted farther and farther away until one Tuesday morning, June 23, the memories came rushing back. The news came over the radio that Al Capone had been arrested. He’d been indicted ten days earlier but was now in custody, along with 68 other members of an alleged beer syndicate. They were charged with 5,000 offenses against the Prohibition law. Five thousand! Capone himself was accused of conspiracy dating all the way back to 1922.
As I stood by the front desk listening to the radio with Uncle Cy, I was surprised at the feelings welling up inside me. Al Capone was a terrible, evil man and he deserved prison for all that he had done, and yet….
Hey, kid, you all right?
His face was vivid in my mind, that fleshy moon with the gray eyes and bushy brows. I bit my lower lip remembering the sting as he touched my tattered knees with a handkerchief.
You gotta be more careful, little lady.
He didn’t have to stop and help me. I was just one more clumsy kid who hit a buckled sidewalk and skinned her knees, a rite of childhood. Other grown-ups might have clicked their tongues and walked on by, but he didn’t. He squatted down and looked at me the way a father looks at his own child and asked me if I was all right. And then he’d wiped away the blood and given me a handkerchief for my tears.
Say, you like elephants?
And he’s given me too a piece of carved ivory that I’d kept in my treasure box for eight years.
“Looks like old Scarface is really in hot water this time,” Uncle Cy said as he turned off the radio. “I guess it’s bound to catch up with you sooner or later.”
Uncle Cy sighed.
So did I.
Tour Giveaway 1 winner will receive a copy of 3 of Ann’s Books Sweet Mercy, Travelers Rest and Promises to Keep Open to US & Canada Only Ends 5/21/13 a Rafflecopter giveaway
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