I found this book by accident and glad I did. This is a excellent read. A very heartwarming book about family and how forgiveness can change everything. ( )

Irene and Nate Stanley have a happy family life with their two children Bliss and Shep. Tragedy befalls them when their son Shep is shot dead. His killer Daniel Robbin is on death row for his murder. When he is set a date for his execution it affects everybody in more ways than one.

I really enjoyed this book. The story drew me in from the word go and I really wanted to see how things were going to pan out. I really enjoy books like this that have a story to them. I feel like that I have become part of the characters lives and I am living along side them.

I felt the story was powerful but very sad at times. I was been carried away with the events in the book and at didn't want it to end. The characters will be with me for a while.

It makes a change to read a book like this and is very much like a Jodie Picoult where you ask yourself what would you have done in the situation.

I can recommend this book for anyone who wants to be engrossed in a story. ( )

This is definitely a book where unhappy families are the name of the game. We begin with the murder of our heroine Irene's son and things are really pretty dang grim from there on in. The writing is both gripping and powerful, but there are quite a few occasions where it strays rather too much into the melodramatic. The middle of the book is also too long, and we did by then need to get to the point of the story.

The great mystery is what really happened when Shep (the son) died, and the events that led up to this and immediately away from it. I have to say that I guessed what was going on by Page 10, but it didn't take away my enjoyment - as Irene didn't have a clue and it's always good to have a clueless heroine, when the reader knows so much more.

That said, I thought the reasons behind the murder were appallingly old-fashioned - did people really think in that way in mid-90s rural America??!? Then again, at last, we in rural UK have something to be proud of, as surely we got over all that kind of nonsense in the 1970s. Hey ho.

The ending is spot-on, however, and I loved the way the family came to some kind of resolution with their past, and with some kind of hope for the future too. It left me with a good feeling, which is always to be desired in any book.

Verdict: 3.5 stars. Gripping but a little melodramatic ( )

excellent book about forgiveness. Thought provoking look at the death penalty and homosexuality. ( )

Naseem Rakha drew me into this story immediately. The book opens in the office of Tab Mason, the superintendent of the penitentiary where Shep’s killer, after 19 years in prison, had stopped his appeals and was scheduled to die by lethal injection in less than a month. The omniscient point of view takes us primarily into the heads of Mason and Shep’s mother Irene, with occasional plunges into Shep’s father and other characters. The setting moves back and forth too, between their Illinois farm and the town in Oregon where the murder took place, and the time swings from the family’s move to Oregon in 1983 to the execution date in 2004. These switches are seamless and serve to enlarge the canvas of the story, to remind us that this tale is bigger than this one family.

But it IS mostly the intense and personal story of one family. And as the plot twists unfold, the reader travels Irene’s road of fierce hate and revenge-hunger to eventual forgiveness and re-connection. I felt that the author does an admirable job of avoiding the pat, the easy, the black and white sound bite – even the superintendent’s skin is a mixture – and she has written a provocative story that challenges the reader both emotionally and intellectually.

Stories like this one offer us the voices and faces behind big issues. They not only move us and challenge us as readers, but also serve to keep us honest as citizens of our communities, our nation, and our world.
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