BOOK REVIEW: The Redemption of Micah

THE REDEMPTION OF MICAH by Beth Williamson may be an excellent example of how a book with good possibilities can go wrong.

In 1875, in Plum Creek, Colorado, Micah has been keeping watch by Eppie’s bed. Eppie has been in a coma for three years from a gun shot wound. Micah has been talking to her, reading to her, and several months into the coma, has helped to deliver their baby girl, Miracle.

Waking up, Eppie is confused by the strangers around her and with no idea of who she is. She can not feel anything for this little girl that she had never met, and she can not trust this man, Micah, who says that they had been deeply in love before the accident.

Several situations show that the feelings from the recent war still run deep and as outsiders start visiting, we learn that Eppie had been born to a freed slave. Because of Miracle’s mixed blood, some of the good people in town decide that the little girl should be in a more stable home.  She is kidnapped and placed with a family who had lost their children.

THE REDEMPTION OF MICAH has a good story line. The people are easy to like -- or dislike, and some of the touches involving race, motherhood, and enemies from a past war are subtle, but they make the author’s point.

The actual dialogue was well done, keeping fairly well to the time and place. Eppie surprised everyone after the coma by speaking like Micah, a cultured, educated Southerner. I was able to go along with that, after all, he had been reading and talking to her for three years while she was unconscious. It was the only voice she heard.

My problem was that too many times the author felt obligated to use modern, vulgar language for some of the love scenes. That such usage was disturbing may sound petty, especially from a reader who has certainly read those words before,  but it bothers me on two levels. First, I want authors to be consistent with their characters, and secondly, I will be glad when authors stop insulting us by thinking that vulgarities will sell books.

It was a shame that the language jolted the reader out of the mood and setting that the author was trying to creating. So many other things were right with this book.