Set at the notorious Jefferson City Prison, a novel about loss and healing and unexpected bonds.Evelyn Grant, newly widowed, returns to her hometown of Jefferson City, Missouri, where she rents rooms in her old family home across the street from the Missouri State Penitentiary. Then Evelyn sets about trying to see her mother for the first time in forty years. She knows where to find her across the street, behind the limestone wall: Mabel Grant is serving a life sentence in the penitentiary for murdering the twin babies of a neighbor. Evelyn makes the acquaintance of Roz Teal, who has befriended a condemned prisoner soon to be executed. Through Roz Evelyn meets Ezekiel, lifetime convict, who leads Evelyn to her mother. A novel about loss and healing and unexpected bonds."
Released in 2014, limestone wall is a literary work. The language is evocative and poetic. The author writes beautifully. The prose is haunting and there are a lot of quote-worthy passages.
I'm generally not the target audience for modern literature, so I truly don't want it to seem that I'm damning the book with faint praise. It is so skillfully written and I did enjoy reading it. For me it was very sad and bleak. The wreck and reverberations of many lives by insanity, criminality, tragedy and consequence. The book ended on something of a bleak note, but given the nature of the book, there wasn't room for a happily ever after type ending. There was resolution (we've all read books that make us want to grind our teeth with non-endings; this isn't that at all), but the whole experience just left me feeling melancholy and misty...
Four stars for the amazing writing. Beautifully, hauntingly written.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.
