The Miracle of Mercy Land by River Jordan

There is magic in a good book. It is a powerful something that pulls you in and captures a part of you. It may be your heart, your sense of adventure, or perhaps your imagination, but whatever part of you it is, it is fully enraptured by the magical power of the book. Even time becomes nothing as we sit and read for hours, taking no notice of the ticking of the clock. Not caring if it is time for a favorite show to be on television, or time to take the dog for a walk. Instead we are moved away from time and into another world. A world of new people whose lives we get to watch. For a few moments we feel as though our own lives have become intertwined with these people, our new friends. Friends in a book. Friends whose journeys we follow page by page. Each turn of the page brings us closer to the end. In a truly good book it is easy to both anticipate and dread that ending. Oh, the anticipation of discovering the conclusion of the journey, of knowing how it all turns out. And yet, there is the dread. Once we reach the end, that is it. There is no more. We've concluded our look through the lives of our new friends and oh how we wish there were maybe just a chapter or two more so that we could spend just a bit more time with them.


This is how I felt about The Miracle of Mercy Land. A book about a woman who gets the chance to glimpse into the lives of those around her through a book of magic and wonder.



about the book:
Mercy Land has made some unexpected choices for a young woman in the 1930s. The sheltered daughter of a traveling preacher, she chooses to leave her rural community to move to nearby Bay City on the warm, gulf-waters of southern Alabama. There she finds a job at the local paper and spends seven years making herself indispensible to old Doc Philips, the publisher and editor. Then she gets a frantic call at dawn—it’s the biggest news story of her life, and she can’t print a word of it.
Doc has come into possession of a curious book that maps the lives of everyone in Bay City—decisions they’ve made in the past, and how those choices affect the future. Mercy and Doc are consumed by the mystery locked between the pages—Doc because he hopes to right a very old wrong, and Mercy because she wants to fulfill the book’s strange purpose. But when a mysterious stranger shows up, Mercy begins to understand she may have to choose between love and loneliness . . . or good and evil . . . for the rest of her life.

I received this book free from Waterbrook Multnomah book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.