Saints In Limbo by River Jordan

Saints in Limbo by River Jordan

My review

Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Now THIS is what storytelling is all about! I'd previously read an earlier River Jordan book, The Messenger Of Magnolia Street, and loved her writing style. She has a way with describing people and places that brings them to life and allows the reader to clearly "see" them in the mind's eye. Her events are so well written it's as though the characters pulled up a chair for the reader and invited her to sit right down and live through the experience with them.

Velma True had a long and mainly fulfilling marriage to Joe True. When he died, a part of Velma died with him. After experiencing a frightening incident in her front yard shortly after Joe's death, Velma was afraid to leave her front porch without the security of a thread tied to the porch and extending to wherever she wanted to go. There was more than one thread attached to the porch documenting Velma's trips from safety into a world that now scared her.

When Velma receives a visit from a man, a stranger to her, and he gives her what appears to be simply a flat, smooth rock, she doesn't quite know what to make of it. But she soon finds out that the rock can give her back some of what she thought was lost: time with Joe through memories that seem very present and real. The stranger who left the rock with Velma also gave her a warning that what she now possessed would come with a price because there were those who wanted what Velma had, and she would not be safe in the presence of those visitors.

There are other characters with whom Velma interacts. People who love her and believe getting out of her house and off that porch without the security of her threads would be good for her. River Jordan gives each of those characters traits and individuality that sets aside each one in the story to his or her own personality. As they all develop we see how they fit into the overall story, and we find each person's motivation believable.

Saints In Limbo is a story about hope and growing awareness about who we are and how we got to be that way. What I liked most about it was Jordan's grasp of growing older and how that unstoppable force of nature changes a person at what appears to be the end of her or his life. Hope can slip away without one's even being aware of it, but it can be recaptured and enjoyed for whatever life is left to live.

I look forward with great anticipation to whatever story River Jordan shares with her readers next.




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