WOW!!!!
I can say more but Ms. Casey, you really put a great book
together this time. Hell with The Lid Blown Off is
one of the best books I have read, even though I sort of knew
what was going on. I sat down to read your latest book, and
figured I would read it in just a short few days, a little
at a time, but when I started reading it I could NOT put it
down. I finished one night of reading because I was too sleepy
to stay awake, picked it up the next morning and couldn't
put it down until I finished it.
Alafair Tucker is on her toes again and she has taught her
children well. They all know to look for the hidden realities
of whatever is happening around the activities that all the
family gets involved in. This time, it is daughter Ruth who
has her sweet half grown personality awakened so gently to
the possibilities of life. Ruth is growing up and plays the
piano like a dream, and she is being groomed by Miz. Beckie
MacKenzie to become the next Piano teacher for the town of
Boynton. She is becoming a beguiling young lady and some of
the young men in town are starting to notice, Jubal Beldon
being one and young Trenton Calder, the other. Jubal notices
for some small nefarious purposes of his own and Trenton notices
because he, after knowing young Ruth all of her life, has
suddenly awoken to the stunning beauty and the musical abilities,
of this young girl.
Jubal dies a mysterious death after making disparaging remarks
about Wallace MacKenzie, grandson of Miz. Beckie, and then
a real wayward tornado (a horror that is absolutely spell-binding)
ripping through the area and the townspeople having to make
do with what has happened and all the destruction from it.
Trenton is charged with finding out how and why Jubal died,
he is the very young Deputy Sheriff of Boynton and Sheriff
Scott Tucker is out of commission, after being wounded by
one of the other Beldon brothers, Hosea. This story gives
a lot of insight into the criminal processes that took place
"back when" during the early years of the 20th Century.
This is a down-home book about a down-home family living in
a time when the State of Oklahoma was just growing up to fit
into its coming bounties of being a big state.
I really do love the Tucker family and all they stood for,
and made for themselves during times of hardship and peril
in a place that was not as hospitable as one might be led
to think it was. Donis Casey tells it like it was, and what
every person who was on the cutting edge of settling the Midwest
had to know to survive. This is the 5th book by Ms. Casey
that I have reviewed (although she has written 7 now) and
I love her style of writing, her cohesive ways to keep the
story together and the downright honesty that is put into
her characters. Keep writing your stories for the world to
see and read, because they are needed by all of us to appreciate
what our fore-families all lived through to get to where we
are now. You tell us why our values are and should be in front
of us every day and make us proud that we have those values.
You go Girl, use that gift that you have. Hell with The
Lid Blown Off is an absolutely great story.
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