{"id":1098,"date":"2013-08-30T18:17:11","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T00:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1098"},"modified":"2013-08-30T18:17:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-31T00:17:11","slug":"julia-keller-bitter-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/julia-keller-bitter-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Keller: Bitter River"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Julia Keller\u2019s first novel was a knockout, and this second book in the series may even be better.\u00a0 She brings an amazingly assured voice to her storytelling, reminiscent very much of Sharyn McCrumb\u2019s classic ballad novels.\u00a0 The thing is, McCrumb wrote those after she\u2019d cut her teeth on her (admittedly great fun) Elizabeth McPherson books.\u00a0 While Keller has been a journalist and has written a non-fiction book, she plunged into novel writing full speed ahead with the first in this series, A Killing in the Hills.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"bitterriver\"<\/a>American mystery writing \u2013 to my biased mind \u2013 doesn\u2019t get much better than the mix of grit, setting, rich characters and sheer story telling power Keller brings to her work.\u00a0 Oh, and her prose is beautiful too.\u00a0 I\u2019d compare her to a couple of my other favorite writers, William Kent Krueger and Julia Spencer-Fleming, for the beautiful prose and passion all three seem to share.<\/p>\n

Comparisons aside, Keller very much has her own original voice.\u00a0 Her central character, Belfa Elkins, is the county prosecutor in tiny Acker\u2019s Gap, West Virginia.\u00a0 Acker\u2019s Gap is her childhood home; she\u2019s returned there from swanky Washington, D.C. to make a place for herself as an adult in her former hometown.<\/p>\n

Because of some events and struggles in the first novel, Bell\u2019s teenage daughter, Carla, has moved back to D.C. to live with her Dad.\u00a0 Bell sorely misses her though as usual her job is eating up her time and attention.\u00a0 The story opens with two things: one is the fact that Bell\u2019s sister is missing and she can\u2019t bring herself to leave Acker\u2019s Gap for fear she\u2019ll miss her if she decides to turn up.<\/p>\n

The other is the death of the local teen age star, Lucinda Trimble.\u00a0 Lucinda was apparently beautiful, athletic, intelligent and <\/i>nice.\u00a0 She seemed to have no enemies in the world, but she\u2019s still turned up dead in her car, submerged in the Bitter River.\u00a0 She\u2019s found by a jogger and it\u2019s the sad duty of Sheriff Nick Fogelsong to deliver the bad news to Lucinda\u2019s mother, Maddie, a former flame.<\/p>\n

Nick\u2019s past connection to Maddie and his lack of professionalism when he notifies her alone comes between him and Bell, and explains some of the later events, most of which are foreshadowed by the relentless press of the story and the events in the small town.\u00a0 Bell is distracted by the arrival of a former DC acquaintance who has come to town to regroup away from the big city in the comforting shade of the mountains.<\/p>\n

The crises in Acker\u2019s Gap go from bad to worse.\u00a0 Lucinda\u2019s death is proving a tough nut to crack, and then another tragedy rocks the town.\u00a0 Bell and Nick\u2019s estrangement prevents them working together effectively, and when Bell is briefly knocked out of commission, it throws a further wrench in the works.<\/p>\n

Nothing gets in the way, however, of Keller\u2019s efforts to tell a riveting and moving story.\u00a0 In this novel she is examining all the fierce permutations of love, and how the ties of family and kinship can either help or hinder you in the world.\u00a0 She also takes a hard look at the bleak and overriding poverty in Appalachia.\u00a0 All in all this is a reading journey you won\u2019t quickly forget.\u00a0 After you dry your tears, it will probably also make you thoughtful long after you\u2019ve turned the last page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julia Keller\u2019s first novel was a knockout, and this second book in the series may even be better.\u00a0 She brings an amazingly assured voice to her storytelling, reminiscent very much of Sharyn McCrumb\u2019s classic ballad novels.\u00a0 The thing is, McCrumb wrote those after she\u2019d cut her teeth on her (admittedly great fun) Elizabeth McPherson books.\u00a0 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-1098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-psychological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}