This is the third well-received explicitly Christian novel by Sarah Loudin Thomas who lives near Asheville, but sets her fiction in West Virginia where she was born and raised. The setting for When Silence Sings is Thurmond, West Virginia, and the New River Gorge in 1930. The protagonist is Coleman Harpe, a railroad worker who is conflicted about becoming a preacher. His Harpe family is feuding with the McLean family, led by Serepta McLean, a powerful local business woman – a feud that has been reignited by the murder of Coleman’s cousin. This leaves lots of compelling issues to be resolved by the skillful hand of this talented novelist.
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 2019. 342 pages. Trade paperback.