Echoes of Mercy - Review and Excerpt

Idgie Says:
I mentioned on FB the other day that I picked up this novel, meaning to simply start leafing through it, get the feel of it, in anticipation of actually reading it so that I could review it.  3 hours later I'm walking around the house with it still in my hand  - reading over the eggs I had hard boiling, over the counter I'm wiping down, over the laundry basket and the cat box.  I was sucked in immediately.  I didn't put it down all day and finished it by the time I went to bed.

Billie is an interesting character in that she holds so much weighty guilt on her - most of it by her own making.  Yes, there are a lot of challenges in her life, but none that require she give up her life and love for.  What's requiring it is her own guilt that in her mind demands this life sacrifice - a deep guilt for an action in her youth.  

When she suddenly has a chance to somewhat rectify her youthful wrong, she jumps in with both feet.  The novel takes an unexpectedly dark and twisted turn toward the end and plunges full speed ahead until the last page.

Another interesting twist in this book is that Billie is not some willowy 20-something creature with her entire future in front of her.  Billie is 49 years old and has lived a life already, but at the same time she's nowhere near retiring from living and is still wanted and loved and lusted after.  It's nice to be reminded we don't all need to put in the hair rollers and do nothing but bake cakes after 45. 


Click HERE to read the first chapter.

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Echoes of Mercy

Author: Kim Boykin
Genre: Fiction/Thriller
Publiser: River’s Edge Media
ISBN: 9781940595573
Price: $17.00
Pages: 258

How can you make up for something that you did as a kid that was both so stupid and so terrible, forty years later it still follows you like a pack of lost dogs? For Billie Warren, it means piling up more and more responsibilities, doing good for the community as the police chief of her Lowcountry hometown. Trying to be the best mother of a teen mom, and daughter to her mom with Alzheimer’s, that she can be.

 But Billie’s fragile life is thrown into turmoil when the target of her biggest regret, Crazy Sadie, shows up claiming to have witnessed the only murder in the town’s history. Sadie Byrd accuses the nearly dead and sainted Judge Norris of savagely beating his own little girl to death forty years ago. Could Miss Sadie be right? As Billie uncovers the terrible truth of stolen babies and bone-chilling corruption, she will have to risk everything when powerful people are prepared to do anything to keep buried.