Genre: Literary Fiction
Published: January 19, 2021
Pages: 322
Named by BuzzFeed as one of Winter 2021's Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Books and Top 10 New Books To Add To Your Reading List!
It’s hot, Texas, and the year 1977. Jimmy Carter is in office.
The Walters are a good, churchgoing family who stand for holiness, purity, grace, and Christian love. Except when they don't.
Family patriarch and fanatic preacher, Victor Black, knows many things for sure, including the fact that abortion is murder and should be punishable by death—a position he defends live in a televised debate. Black’s youngest granddaughter, Stephanie Walters, sits in the front row wearing her frilly Sunday dress, listening carefully to every word.
But it doesn't take long for cracks to appear in the Walters upstanding family façade. Stephanie's mother, Lily, begins telling unsettling stories about having a baby who died, and her story keeps changing. It’s clear Lily has a secret—one that righteous Victor Black would kill her for if he knew. This family secret burns more than the lies . . .
From the Moon I Watched Her is a coming-of-age tale about the skeletons that lurk under church pews and the little girl who goes looking for and finds them. Amid the dark and quirky terrain of camp revivals, burning crosses, and public shunnings, one child from the Southern Churches of Christ cries out.
It’s hot, Texas, and the year 1977. Jimmy Carter is in office.
The Walters are a good, churchgoing family who stand for holiness, purity, grace, and Christian love. Except when they don't.
Family patriarch and fanatic preacher, Victor Black, knows many things for sure, including the fact that abortion is murder and should be punishable by death—a position he defends live in a televised debate. Black’s youngest granddaughter, Stephanie Walters, sits in the front row wearing her frilly Sunday dress, listening carefully to every word.
But it doesn't take long for cracks to appear in the Walters upstanding family façade. Stephanie's mother, Lily, begins telling unsettling stories about having a baby who died, and her story keeps changing. It’s clear Lily has a secret—one that righteous Victor Black would kill her for if he knew. This family secret burns more than the lies . . .
From the Moon I Watched Her is a coming-of-age tale about the skeletons that lurk under church pews and the little girl who goes looking for and finds them. Amid the dark and quirky terrain of camp revivals, burning crosses, and public shunnings, one child from the Southern Churches of Christ cries out.
I received the audiobook version of this through Netgalley. This is my honest review.
I have read several memoirs lately that focus on different religious groups and the way children tend to face abuse in them. This book felt like those memoirs. It starts when the main character is young and the language and speech patterns make it very clear that she's young. The speech patterns get progressively more refined as the main character ages, which really helped to show that time passage. The narration for this aspect of the story was superb.
This story mostly makes me mad because Stephanie should have been able to expect her parents to protect her from harm, but their religion made that excessively complicated. I believe aspects of their religion also led to the sexual abuse that was portrayed, although it was far less severe than in some of the memoirs I've read lately. If that is a trigger for you, be warned it exists in some detail in this book.
Overall I give From the Moon I Watched Her 3.8653 out of 5 stars. - Katie
Emily English Medley, MSN, APRN, FNP-C is a debut author from Houston. She has published several short articles in local newspapers and has one magazine article to her credit. She is a member of The Writers League of Texas and The Houston Writer's Guild.
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