Sheri Reynolds

I love storytelling. I am not a storyteller in the sense that I get up in front of groups of people and tell memorized, rehearsed stories, but I have been known to spin a yarn or two among friends. And I truly appreciate the skill it takes to tell a story as rich as this one. Finch Nobles is a caretaker of the dead, literally and figuratively. She tends the grounds of the cemetery in her town, but she also tends the souls of those people buried there. Finch is feared by the locals, mostly show more due to her disfigurement from a burn suffered when she was a child, but also because of her “I don’t give a damn” attitude. However, both obstacles are overcome by her relationships with the spiritual inhabitants of the cemetery and the live people who visit them. Reynolds weaves a gentle but riveting tale of love, hate and redemption that stretches the veil between the living and the dead. This is one I’ll remember for a long time… show less

The Rapture of Canaan is the story of a young girl’s coming of age within the confines of the Christian cult her grandfather devised. She struggles to understand her place in a community ruled more by her grandfather, Pastor Herman, than by Jesus. She’s desperate to avoid the sin her grandfather preaches against and uncertain why she doesn’t feel the connection to Jesus that has her family speaking in tongues and crying out to God during Sunday services. Into this confusion comes show more James, her prayer partner, and the two are equally torn by their desire to please God (or maybe just Pastor Herman) and to explore their newfound feelings for each other. When Ninah finds herself pregnant and abandoned, she fears her life in the church and the only community she’s ever known is over, but it may be that her indiscretion and its unexpected outcome will change the lives of the congregants of the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind forever.

This story starts off quickly with simple prose and a sympathetic narrator in Ninah. She has had the laws of the church drummed into her but finds herself confused that all the rhetoric and suffering for Jesus doesn’t produce the spiritual outpouring in her that she witnesses in the rest of her family and community. In fact, at points in the early going the writing style actually seems too simplistic, and I found myself bored for just the briefest moment before the story rapidly picked up steam.

As Ninah begins to experience the consequences of her pregnancy, the book plumbs the depths of radical religion, the fragility of community, the mysterious ways of God, and the weaknesses of self-proclaimed arbiters of right and wrong. Reynolds has created a very captivating picture of a community dominated by a charismatic leader. Ninah’s journey to discovery of what she herself will choose to believe is compelling reading. show less

Dori is a trouble young teen living with her unstable mother when she takes part in a violent assault against a young gay boy. Her mother helps her to escape justice by sending her to live with her older sister, Teresa, a woman Dori has never met before, a woman who is not only a lesbian but in a committed relationship with her wife, Jen.

The Tender Grave is a beautifully written story that shines a lights on families, how they affect people and actions, both for good and bad. The narrative show more is split between Dori and Teresa and, in many ways they are very different despite their shared parent. Dori is impulsive and headstrong while Teresa rarely reacts without thinking things through completely. But, perhaps most importantly, Dori has been involved in a murder while Teresa is trying desperately to conceive. All of this may make it seem like a very dark novel and, in some places, it is but, overall, it leaves the reader with a sense of hope, that family isn't necessarily destiny and change is possible.

The story is left open at the end, leaving both sister's stories unfinished but that seems fitting here. This is the kind of story that makes you think long after the last page is read and I recommend it highly. show less

I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. Sheila abandons her 2 children in a campground with nothing but a trashbag full of clothes and her mother's phone number, written in black magic marker on her son's back.

Seven years later, Tessa Lee finds out that her mother has been living just 2 hours away. Her visit to her mother shakes up everybody's life.

Sheila's mother is set up as the saintly, long-suffering grandmother, who devotes herself to the children her daughter has show more dumped. Then she gets knocked off her pedestal - we find out she's a racist, who drove her daughter away because she couldn't tolerate her dating a black man.

As for Sheila, we find out that she wasn't as bad as we thought. She recognized that she couldn't take care of her children and left them with someone who could. She made bad choices, but she tried to protect her kids. By the end, you believe that she might just be able to pull her life together. show less