Breaking the Chain
DLSIJ Press
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REVIEW BY DAVID G. LAGRAFF
Breaking the Chain is emerging novelist Carla D. Ledbetter's second book and the sequel to Blue Moon, the best-selling e-story of developing psychic Mary Windom. The author says she writes mostly after midnight, and she finds a few past lives emerging into her characters when the rest of us working stiffs are asleep. The late night writing creeps into the setting as well, with lots of dark stormy nights, full moons and things that go squish in the night to up the level of suspense. In this continuation of Mary Windom's story, we undertake the next phase in the coming of age of a voodoo priestess. Mary is the typical girl next door who just happens to be an unwitting and unwilling novice in the fine art of messing with ghosts and powers and such. She's a "retriever," one who can see into the past and find things lost long ago, and in this sequel, the all-American girl is forced to face the fact that she has a special gift. As the story gets underway, Mary is a happy newlywed, and she and her husband Jack have launched a successful bed and breakfast on a formerly haunted plantation in St. Francisville, located somewhere in the New Orleans area. Mary has everything a girl could wantóthe plantation is beautiful and Jack is sexy even when sweaty. But the cauldron thickens when Sadie, an old voodoo priestess who once lived at the plantation, comes home to die, secretly hoping to pass on her considerable powers to Mary. Things take a lurch for the worse when Sadie visits a graveyard and learns from the spirits that an evil sonofabitch named "the brown man" is coming to kill them all. The reason is unknown. (Must somebody named "the brown man" have a reason to do what he does?) When "the brown man" finally arrives, the frightened group gamely musters up to the skirmish. But Sadie takes a bullet to the chest, and Mary is forced to use her skills. Will she have the spiritual grit to give "the brown man" a lethal hit? You'll have to read all the way to the last page to find out. Ledbetter blends the tensions in the story masterfully, so that the suspense comes at you from many angles, as much from the growth we see in Mary as she develops her "sight" as from the approach of the decidedly lethal "brown man." Since Mary doesn't quite attain full voodoo priestess status in this sequel, it's a good bet we'll see another episode. I hope so. Keep 'em coming, Carla. If you've never read an e-book before, you might be interested to know that the Adobe PDF version of Breaking the Chain is easy to read straight from the computer screen. If you're nearsighted, you can enlarge the type. The book is also available in paperback, in case you want to read while eating barbecue or simply want to avoid electrocuting yourself by sitting in the tub with your monitor perched on the ledge. David G. LaGraff is a California writer and reviewer.
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