Missing Isaac

Valerie Fraser Luesse is an Alabama native who has spent most of her life in the Deep South.  She is best known for her work with Southern Living magazine, where she has specialized in stories about unique pockets of Southern culture - those places where the people and their landscape are intricately intertwined - such as the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi Delta, Acadian Louisianna, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  The many years that she spent crisscrossing the South, meeting local people and listening to their stories, have lent her fiction its authentic color.
Luesse is a graduate of Auburn University and Baylor University.
Missing Isaac is her first novel.

Isaac believed in luck.
But from Pete's point of view, Isaac's luck had all run out.

When Pete McLean loses his father in the summer of 1962, his friend Isaac is one of the few people he can lean on.  Though their worlds are as different as black and white, friendship knows no color.  So when Isaac suddenly goes missing, Pete is determined to find out what happened - no matter what it costs him.  His quest will lead him into parts of town that he knows only through rumore=s and introduce him to a girl who will change his life.  What they discover together will change the small Southern town of Glory, Alabama - forever.

My Thoughts:

I know it is very early in the year, but I may have just read the most impactful book of the year for me.  Valerie Fraser Luesse's Missing Isaac, her debut novel, set in 1960's Alabama was a beautiful read that made me mad, made me cry, and most of all made me think deeply about my own personal prejudices.  Luesse expertly captured the era and its challenges with colorful dialogue and deeply developed characters.  And the characters...I felt, while reading this story, as if I were physically in the middle of the story.  I could clearly see in my mind the expressions on the faces of the characters and smell the smells.  Readers won't just sit down to read a few chapters of this one.  You will read page one and soon find your self at page 337.  At so many points in the story, I would read through a scene and just have to stop and breathe and take in what I had just read. Luesse digs deep into the human heart.  Her books will have a place on my keeper shelf.
*I received a complimentary copy of the book.  All opinions stated here are my own,

Happy Reading,
Jennifer