Title: The Miracle of Mercy Land
Author: River Jordan
Publisher: Waterbrook Press
My thoughts: Mercy Land is just a girl in the 1930's when she moves from Bittersweet to Bay City. She has followed her Aunt Ida's advice and gone to the big city - at least big compared to Bittersweet. She moves into a boarding house and eventual lands herself a job at the Banner - the local newspaper. She becomes known as Doc's girl.
Doc is the owner and editor of the Banner and she goes from being an employee to being a friend. She is really the assistant editor and does whatever needs to be done to get the paper out with the most current headlines. When Doc calls her to in as soon as possible one morning, she goes wondering what the big news will be. It turns out that a book has mysteriously arrived on Doc's desk and he has spent all night wondering what it means.
The book is unlike anything anyone has ever seen. When you touch it, it pulls you in and takes you through other people's lives from birth on, and the lives overlap and run together. What feels like minutes with the book turns out to be hours when you can finally pull yourself away. They don't know what this means, or why they received this book. They only know that it must be protected and that they have to figure out what it is to be used for.
This book poses the question of whether we would change the past if we had the choice, and in so doing, how would the ripples affect those around us. For me, the first 100 pages or so seemed to be slow moving, and I was almost ready to put it aside when I was given enough information to start to wonder what was really going to happen to Mercy and how her past was going to affect her present. It really made me think about some of the choices I had made in my life and how my life might be different now if any of those choices had been different. At what point does one's life change?
About the author: River Jordan is a critically acclaimed novelist and playwright. Her previous works include Saints in Limbo and The Messenger of Magnolia Street. She speaks around the country on the "Power of Story" and produces and hosts the radio series Clearstory from Nashville, Tennessee where she makes her home.
~I received this book from KBK Public Relations in exchange for my review.~
Publisher/Publication Date: Waterbrook Press, Sept 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-45705-9
341 pages
