Slow Burn by Mary DeMuth in My Box

The sun stood hot and still in the sky. My skin felt its warmth and welcomed it. As the day wore on, my skin began to shift from its usual pale color to an enlivened pink. By sunset, my white, freckled skin shone bright red--victim of a slow burn.

Mary DeMuth's second offering in the Defiance Texas Trilogy, Slow Burn, provides the reader with a slow, building tension of happenings in the little Texas town of Defiance. The missing 13-year-old, Daisy, is found but the killer is not. Muriel's cancer eats away at a snail's pace. Hixon's feelings for Emory Chase percolate until the moment is right to pour out his true feelings. The characters build to an eruption of emotions that culminate in revealing secrets long hidden and buried.

Slow Burn reveals God's character of mercy and grace through Hixon's love for Emory. The rejection Emory felt from her mother parlayed itself into her own rejection of relationships, even that of her daughter, Daisy. Hixon sought to draw Missy, as he lovingly called her, out of the past's clutches and melt her heart of ice with the warmth of God's love and forgiveness.

Mary DeMuth cleverly works in and through relationships, redemption and restoration in Defiance, Texas. The characters evolve into lessons the reader can apply to their own life. Life change is an expected outcome as the characters become real through DeMuth's carefully woven story.