Saints in Limbo by River Jordan - BOOK REVIEW

Title:  Saints in Limbo
Author: River Jordan
Publisher:  Waterbook Press, a division of Random House
ISBN 10: 0307446700
ISBN 13:  9780307446701
Paperback, 351 pages

Good Reads description:

Ever since her husband Joe died, Velma True’s world has been limited to what she can see while clinging to one of the multicolored threads tied to the porch railing of her home outside Echo, Florida.

When a mysterious stranger appears at her door on her birthday and presents Velma with a special gift, she is rattled by the object’s ability to take her into her memories–a place where Joe still lives, her son Rudy is still young, unaffected by the world’s hardness, and the beginning is closer than the end. As secrets old and new come to light, Velma wonders if it’s possible to be unmoored from the past’s deep roots and find a reason to hope again. 

My Take:  I think I'm still high from this book.  From the first sentence:

It was the kind of day when even the lost believed.

through the end, I was transported into an everyday world that was somehow more.  Marvelous imagery and evocative prose cause you to smell the wisteria and hear the plop of the mullets as they jump up and hit back down into the water of Echo, Florida.  A world where a plain, smooth rock suddenly eddies and flows with color, opening the door into a magical place of remembrance, and an evil that feeds on regret comes knocking in whatever face it wants to don that day.

We meet Velma, clinging to threads in her front yard to keep from being swept away by the current that gripped her when she opened her mailbox to find her husband Joe's death certificate waiting there.

We meet her best friend Sara Long, a retired teacher whose memories are slowly slipping away.

We meet Rudy, Velma's son, handsome and charming, but never living up to his potential.  Drinking and womanizing to keep the bugs that he sometimes feels crawling on his skin at bay.

We meet Annie, a musically-gifted teen being raised by an uncaring and emotionally abusive aunt after the sudden death of her mother from a brain aneurism.  She journeys on her own from Texas in search of something that is calling to her in Echo.

There's Rose, owner of the local tavern and pizza joint, who has bailed Rudy out of trouble and been his friend and confidante.

And finally, Mr. Springer, Rudy's retired schoolteacher neighbor, who Rudy enlists to watch his mother one day when he feels an unnamed dread lurking in the trees surrounding his mother's house.

It is difficult to classify this story; a mixture of fantasy, a touch of horror, a drama of friendship and family - it is all of this and more.  

I absolutely loved it.

QUOTES:

They sat quietly for a while, a little more shook up than they would like to admit - both of them being strong women in different ways.  It's not every day that they tussled and rolled in the dirt and traveled through time.

That night Rudy slept in the old bedroom by the front porch, the one closest to the door.  He listened for anything that sounded like it might be hungrily searching for something that now belonged to his mama.

Eddie looked at Rudy and smiled.  Rudy saw him then in the light of his mother's front yard.  He didn't see his lonely neighbor.  He saw the man, the retired teacher from Chicago.  Rudy saw that he held his back up straight when he walked and that he had a gentleman's grace that Rudy didn't possess and never would.  Not like that.  Mr. Eddie Springer had his own magic, but Rudy had been too self-absorbed to see it.

Book Rating:  5 out of 5 stars

Read an Excerpt

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Disclosure:  This is a review of my personal copy.