Twisted Tree by Kent Meyers (ISBN 9780151013890) provided yet another surprise for this reader.

Based on the jacket description of a girl gone missing, I expected a crime novel.
What I got was a thought-provoking series of glimpses into the lives of a cross-section of folks in the South Dakota Town of Twisted Tree.

It almost reads as a collection of short stories. Each chapter can stand on its own; though when read together the vignettes form a powerful slice of life.

Meyers introduces us to the missing girl, the man responsible for her abduction, a grocery checker, a rancher, the girl’s best friend, a former priest and others.

Their lives overlap in the most believable of ways. I was reminded of Mitch Albom’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and its theme that sometimes the folks with the greatest impact on our lives are not the ones you might think.

This is not a quick-reading page-turner. This is a novel dependent upon the nuances of character, not the suspense of plot.

- Tricia Ambrose