Title: Cast a Road Before Me (Bradleyville Series #1)
Author: Brandilyn Collins
Pages: 262
Year: 2014
Genre: Southern Contemporary (1968)
Publisher: Challow Press
Format: eBook (also available in paperback)
Note: I received a free eBook copy of this novel through The
Book Club Network in exchange for my honest opinion.
About the book:
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“A
course-changing event in one’s life can happen in minutes. Or it can form
slowly, a primitive webbing splaying into fingers of discontent, a minuscule
trail hardening into the sinewed spine of resentment. So it was with the mill
workers as the heat-soaked days of summer marched on…”
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City girl Jessie,
orphaned at sixteen struggles to adjust to life with her barely known aunt and
uncle in the tiny town of Bradleyville, Kentucky. Eight years later (1968) she
plans on leaving – to following in her revered mother’s footsteps of serving
the homeless. But the peaceful town she’s come to love is about to be
tragically shattered. Threats of a labor strike rumble through the streets, and
Jessie’s new love and her uncle are swept into the maelstrom. Caught between
the pacifist teachings of her mother these two men, Jessie desperately tries to
deny that Bradleyville is rolling toward violence and destruction.
My review:
An incredible
personal soul searching novel!
This marvelous
story is set in 1968 rural Kentucky. The time period and the setting described
and presented so clearly and in such detail that I felt like I had truly gone
back in time and was walking the streets of Bradleyville along with Jessie.
I love the
simplicity of the characters. They are wonderfully well developed but with
their simpler lifestyle they seem simple and straight forward. I ached for
Jessie throughout the story. I wanted her to sort things out and figure out
what God had planned for her. Her journey of growth and discovery was at times
heart wrenching and heart-warming.
There were a
number of strong believers who were able to speak wisdom into her life and yet
willing to let her make her own decisions. As with real life there were others who
were also working through their own journeys. Some of them ran parallel to
Jessie’s and some of the seemed to intersect her journey.
This is the very
first book that I’ve read by Brandilyn Collins. She has a fantastic writing
style that took me from my home in 2016, to small town Kentucky in 1960/68 as
soon as I started reading. I will definitely be reading many more of her books.
In fact I have already bought book 2 in this series.
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