Friday, June 7, 2013

Gone South by Meg Moseley

Tish, a Michigan woman, decides to buy a house in Alabama, the one her great-great-great-grandparents owned. She is ready for a change. Her fiance had been tragically killed just a few weeks before what was to be their wedding day. Her life has been going nowhere since.

But when she gets moved into her new house, she is shocked to find out that the people in the town, once they know her name, give her a cold shoulder. It seems her great-great-great-grandfather was a “carpet bagger,” taking advantage of the southern people after the Civil War. And no one in the town has forgotten it.

Add Mel to the story. She is a twenty year old runaway who has come back to her hometown, penniless and pretty much disowned by her family and Tish takes her in. And then there's George. He owns an antique store and has eyes for Tish.

And there you have it. The book is longer than the plot deserves. It might have made a good short story. As a full length novel, the story drags. The issues with Mel, being good, then bad, then good, then bad, well, it is just repetitive. And the “romance” between Tish and George is stilted and drags on. Then the end is very quick. Suddenly, every one lives happily ever after.

Some of the characters are Christians, like Meg, who keeps meaning to find a church, as soon as she gets settled. Mel desperately prays to God to help her (even when she is doing something not exactly legal). That's pretty much it.

Meg Moseley lives with her husband in Atlanta, near the foothills of the southern Appalachians. This is her second novel.

WaterbrookMultnomah, 344 pages.


I received a complimentary egalley from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

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