Drowned Sorrow - Vanessa Morgan, Author

Drowned Sorrow – Review by Martha A. Cheves, Author of Stir, Laugh, Repeat

“I wanna go live with my father.”  Giselle paused a moment to take it in.  Why didn’t his answer surprise her?  In fact, somehow she had been expecting this.  “That’s out of the question and you know it.”  Miserably, she started to wash up the dirty dishes while Mark turned to wait on the customers.  She scrubbed furiously, more than was actually necessary, but she bent her mind to the task, glad that she had this activity to clear her mind.  There was no way that Mark was going to leave Moonlight Creek.  No one ever left this place.  If he ever left, he wouldn’t survive.  She was sure about that.  Her mind turned to several directions, looking for solutions, but couldn’t find any.  There had to be something, something she could do to make her son stay. “It’s not completely impossible,” Mark said.  “I warned you,” Giselle said, her voice gentle and without a trace of anger.  “It’s not safe.”  “I don’t care.”  “I care.  You’re my son.”  She paused.  “If I were you, I’d just forget all about it.  There’s nothing you can do about it.  Moonlight Creek isn’t like other places.  Things work different here.”

Megan Blackwood had been a reporter for national television for eight years.  With a growing reputation as an authority on international politics, she was regarded as a leading light in journalism.  But that all came to an end with the death of one of her two children.  It had been seven months and still nothing seemed to ease the pain that Megan felt.  So at the suggestion of a friend, she and her daughter Jenna would be taking what would hopefully be a time for the two of them to bond and hopefully put some of the past behind them.  Their vacation was to take place in a small secluded village called Moonlight Creek.

Upon arrival, Megan began to wonder about her destination decision.  Moonlight Creek was beautiful, nestled around a beautiful, peaceful lake, but the people were different.  She knew that life in a small town moved slow but these people seemed to move at a pace slower than any she had ever encountered.  And the smell.  Everything had a moldy, musky smell, even the rooms of the small hotel she and Jenna would be staying in.  But Megan finally decided this was due to the almost continuous rain that seemed to fall on Moonlight Creek.  And then there was the lake itself.  There was something simply not right about the lake that scared not only Megan but the family dog too that had come along for the trip.

Drowned Sorrow took me completely by surprise.  I have to admit that I never saw the ending coming.  Or for that matter, I was surprised throughout most of the book.  The characters created by Author Vanessa Morgan were perfectly cast, as was the setting.  This has been a very enjoyable read.  But I will tell you that I will probably think twice before spending even a weekend at a small town with a lake.

164 pages

Lumina Press

2008

ISBN# 978-1-60594-162-2