{"id":654,"date":"2009-05-14T10:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T10:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/daisy-chain-by-mary-e-demuth.html"},"modified":"2009-05-14T10:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T10:21:00","slug":"daisy-chain-by-mary-e-demuth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/daisy-chain-by-mary-e-demuth\/","title":{"rendered":"Daisy Chain by Mary E. Demuth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335623615178958034\"<\/a>
Daisy Chain<\/a> by Mary E. Demuth<\/a><\/p>\n

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Zondervan (March 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0310278368
ISBN-13: 978-0310278368<\/p>\n

From Amazon.com
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
The abrupt disappearance of young Daisy Chance haunts the small town of Defiance, Texas. Fourteen-year-old Jed Pepper searches for answers in this gritty and compelling story of love and sorrow, revealing God\u2019s hand of redemption in impossible situations. Lyrical fiction from a bright new literary talent. <\/p>\n

From the Back Cover
The abrupt disappearance of young Daisy Chance from a small Texas town in 1973 spins three lives out of control\u2014Jed, whose guilt over not protecting his friend Daisy strangles him; Emory Chance, who blames her own choices for her daughter\u2019s demise; and Ouisie Pepper, who is plagued by headaches while pierced by the shattered pieces of a family in crisis. <\/p>\n

In this first book in the Defiance, Texas Trilogy, fourteen-year-old Jed Pepper has a sickening secret: He\u2019s convinced it\u2019s his fault his best friend Daisy went missing. Jed\u2019s pain sends him on a quest for answers to mysteries woven through the fabric of his own life and the lives of the families of Defiance, Texas. When he finally confronts the terrible truths he\u2019s been denying all his life, Jed must choose between rebellion and love, anger and freedom. <\/p>\n

Daisy Chain is an achingly beautiful southern coming-of-age story crafted by a bright new literary talent. It offers a haunting yet hopeful backdrop for human depravity and beauty, for terrible secrets and God\u2019s surprising redemption.<\/strong><\/em>
==
Although this book was well-written, I thought it could have been a bit more upbeat. I think Mary\u2019s a great writer, but this story was so full of sadness\u2026although the ending is somewhat hopeful, it\u2019s not as hopeful as other Christian novels I\u2019ve read.<\/p>\n

Fourteen-year-old Jed blames himself for this best friend, Daisy\u2019s, murder. If he\u2019d walked her home that evening, would she still be alive? <\/p>\n

Jed\u2019s home life is full of abuse. His preacher father, Hap, abuses his family, both physically and mentally. It\u2019s kind of hard to see this kind of abuse going on throughout the story. Jed’s mother, Ouisie, is plagued with headaches, a result of the torturous life she’s forced to endure being married to Hap.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a bald woman named Muriel who\u2019s dying of cancer. Hap objects Ouisie’s befriending Muriel since Muriel is a Catholic. Hap believes Catholics are evil.<\/p>\n

Then you have a Black man, Hixon, who people call a prophet. He helps Jed with his pain with his deep knowledge about life and scripture. Hixon’s life has been full of grief since he was rejected by his mother. He learns to find solace through his faith in God.<\/p>\n

There was just a lot of sadness in this book, too much sadness for me. It reminded me of an Oprah book I read a long time ago. Can’t recall the author or the title but, although the issues in the Oprah book were very different than the ones in Daisy Chain, the magnitude of sadness reminded me of this novel. <\/p>\n

Also, there were a lot of loose ends that remained\u2026things that should have been tied up at the end of the story.<\/p>\n

For starters: Who killed Daisy? Who\u2019s lurking in the woods, chasing children, watching? Why is it that Jed\u2019s father (Hap) used to be nice before he decided to become a preacher? Why did he turn mean when he changed his profession? Will this string of abuse against Jed, Ouisie, and Jed’s sister ever end for good?<\/p>\n

I did read the first scene for the next novel, book two in this series, and realized that it’s the same story time-frame as the first book. However, you see a scene that was not revealed in book one. So, I’m assuming the missing plot threads will be revealed in books two and three? I just don’t feel like reading another book to find out the answers to the unsolved questions! Mary did a great job of creating realistic characters you care about…but you don’t know the reasons behind certain events in the story! Not really sure why the publisher decided to do the series this way? I don’t believe I’ve seen this done before? If I have, I can’t recall!<\/p>\n

I highly recommend this book if you want an emotional read with great characters. Demuth is excellent with character development! Really! Just try not to be disappointed at the end when all your questions are not answered!<\/p>\n

~Cecelia Dowdy~<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daisy Chain by Mary E. Demuth Paperback: 368 pages Publisher: Zondervan (March 1, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 0310278368 ISBN-13: 978-0310278368 From Amazon.comEditorial ReviewsProduct DescriptionThe abrupt disappearance of young Daisy Chance haunts the small town of Defiance, Texas. Fourteen-year-old Jed Pepper searches for answers in this gritty and compelling story of love and sorrow, revealing God\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-talk","category-zondervan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paovYP-ay","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}