The Rhythm of Grace on Standalone Mountain by Jeffery L. Deal
A gem of a novel that entertains because it educates.
Two younger ladies separated by half a millennium should summon each ounce of crafty and power to avoid wasting themselves and their family members from religious and bodily annihilation in Jeffery L. Deal’s splendidly imaginative The Rhythm of Grace on Standalone Mountain.
A mix of fiction and historical past, the novel’s backdrop is Standalone Mountain (also called Currahee Mountain) close to Toccoa, Georgia, which units the stage for 2 dramatic and intertwined tales: that of Martha Morris, a younger lady struggling to flee a fanatical spiritual cult within the mid-Seventies, and Atsila, oldest daughter of a Native American chief throughout pre-Columbian instances. Each share sure similarities: they every endure from a cleft palate and the ostracization it brings, and each have an exquisite youthful sister they may do something to guard.
A Younger Woman’s Bravery
Deal makes use of the true-life failure of the Kelly Barnes Dam in Stephens County, Georgia, and the resultant flooding that killed 39 folks in November 1977 as gasoline for Martha’s mad sprint for freedom from the Fellowship of Religion, a small, remoted compound beneath the shadow of Standalone Mountain.
Led by its dynamic but diabolical religious chief, Dinah Whiten, Martha fears for the bodily and emotional security of her ebullient and wonderful sister, Eve. Escaping on the night time of the dam’s failure, Martha’s purpose is the Toccoa Falls Bible Faculty just a few miles down the Tugaloo River the place her Aunt Myrtle resides, and assist awaits. Nonetheless:
“She felt positive they suspected she would run tonight. She was by no means good at mendacity or protecting secrets and techniques. The one factor guarding her ideas was that the others may solely stand to have a look at her for just a few seconds; her ugliness was her protect.”
An Sudden Thriller
Stephens County Sheriff Tom McClain, in the meantime, got here out of retirement three years beforehand when his spouse, Carol, disappeared and not using a hint. He nonetheless searches for clues, and when intensive rains reduce off a small island within the Tugaloo River, he and a deputy motor out to verify for anybody trapped within the rising waters.
What they discover is chilling: a big define within the form of a rock eagle sketched out in coloured ash alongside the bottom, together with two freshly dug graves. Quickly, Sheriff McClain has two new murders to unravel, along with a number of different our bodies which have been discovered up and down the size of the river over a number of years.
Seamlessly Blends Two Worlds
Deal packs critical motion into this small novel, as the main focus veers from the countdown to the dam’s failure within the 1977 storyline to the evocative story of Atsila greater than 5 hundred years earlier.
Right here Deal reveals his wealth of insights and expertise as an anthropologist describing Atsila’s fictional tribe, the Abittibi, whose world he borrowed from histories of the Iroquois, Creek, and Apache. In it, Atsila is a drive of nature, whose robust will and quest for energy to avenge her household is aware of no bounds. Acknowledging her deformity, she makes her restricted selections clear: “since I couldn’t know love, I’d know worry and energy, and the commerce was sufficient.” Deal’s prose is fleet-footed, seamlessly inhabiting trendy and premodern worlds and voices in alternating chapters.
A Uncommon Literary Gem
Juxtaposing Martha’s escape and discovery of an historic cave with a monstrous tenant with Atsila’s adventures and ultimate, pricey selections, Deal cleverly designs an ending that ties the 2 ladies collectively in spirit. On the identical time, he delivers a plausible and acquainted sounding (Waco, anybody?) apocalyptic showdown between the Fellowship of Religion and the regulation, represented by the conscientious McClain — who needs to avoid wasting lives — and the gung-ho FBI brokers desperate to include the menace whereas President Jimmy Carter visits the flood-damaged Bible faculty down the highway.
With an illuminating eye into the folks, geography and topography of the area, to not point out a taut plot with pitch-perfect pacing, The Rhythm of Grace on Standalone Mountain is a gem of a novel that entertains because it educates. Readers can solely hope Deal follows up with one other entry someday quickly.
Jeffery Deal is a doctor, anthropologist, inventor, and famend speaker. His work as a tropical medication specialist has taken him to South Sudan throughout its wars, Liberia through the Ebola pandemic, and dozens of different growing international locations. He earned a grasp of arts in anthropology from the College of South Carolina and a doctorate of medication from the Medical College of South Carolina. Whereas a US naval officer, he accomplished a residency at Walter Reed Medical Heart and later earned a diploma from the London Faculty of Tropical Medication in addition to a fellowship within the Royal Society of Tropical Medication. Dr. Deal has contributed to quite a few skilled journals and newspapers and has printed two novels, Toccoa: Darkish Secrets and techniques of a Small Georgia City and The Mark, in addition to an ethnography of the Dinka of South Sudan, A Land on the Centre of the World.
Publish Date: 11/26/2024
Style: Fiction, Historic Fiction
Creator: Jeffery L. Deal
Web page Depend: 276 pages
Writer: Koehler Books
ISBN: 9798888245002