2015 Christy Award winner! 2015 Carol award winner!When successful New York editor Jen Gibbs discovers a decaying slush-pile manuscript on her desk, she has no idea that the story of Sarra, a young mixed-race woman trapped in Appalachia at the turn of the twentieth century, will both take her on a journey and change her forever. Happy with her life in the city, and at the top of her career with a new job at Vida House Publishing, Jen has left her Appalachian past and twisted family ties far behind. But the search for the rest of the manuscript, and Jen’s suspicions about the identity of its unnamed author, will draw her into a mystery that leads back to the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains . . . and quite possibly through the doors she thought she had closed forever.
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Sexual Content - 1/5
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Violence - 1/5
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Language - /5
/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 1/5
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Summary
An astonishing combination of character and story; astounding in its depth and exhilarating at its height. When talented editor Jen Gibbs lands her dream job at the small, but elite New York based Vida House Publishing, she is eager to continue a successful career. Mysteriously, an unidentified manuscript appears on her desk; suspiciously retrieved from the famed, but forbidden \"Slush Mountain\"; a towering pile of unpublished rejections from decades of want-to-be-writers. This particular 1889 story is quite compelling; chronicling the story of a young, terrified, mistreated Melungeon girl, named Sarra and her chance encounter with a handsome, well-bred Charleston native, Rand Champion. Rand has spent months documenting indigenous trees and plants through-out the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina when he inadvertently becomes Sarra's rescuer from a violent existence. Jen realizes that she might possibly be able to trace this story's authorship back to the enigmatic, reclusive author of the famed \"Time Shifters\" series that she read as a child. Her boss agrees, and she finds herself headed back to the very mountains that she so desperately fought to escape. When she arrives, she must not only face Ethan Hall, who guards his privacy behind the gated fortress of his privately owned mountain, but her conscience demands that she also visit her family; who are still living their poverty-stricken existence within the binds of a harsh, ultra-conservative heretical church community. As Sarra and Rand's story continues to develop; Jen and Ethan must come to terms with their own; discovering that the God who created them has never left them, and it is His story that will entwine itself among the generations to come. We are only His \"story-keepers\". Here are just a couple of my favorite quotes from this wonderful book. \"The truth was, I (Jen) yearned, in a soul-deep way, to be Sarra. To feel that God was so very close, so very concerned with my particular life, so very ready to protect and to love. Always nearby. Always listening. Always leading.\" \"Events like these hinted, sometimes shouted, that the God of my (Jen's) childhood and Lane's HIll, the threatening figure who scorned me and despised me because of my mother's sinful nature, might instead be a God of both purpose and provision. That he might have been looking after me all these years, laying down a path while I worked to convince myself that I was going my own way.\" In the end, \"The Story Keeper\" maintains an intricate balance of past and present, when merged; completes not only one story, but two and is a masterful display from a very talented author.
Violence-There are light descriptions of violence and references to past violence, but no violent scenes.
Sexual-The \"promise\" of romance is built into this story, but there are no romantic encounters.
Drug & Alcohol-A minor character is a heavy drinker, but there are only references to his drinking problems.