Casting Stones by Gina Barlean

I got this Kindle book because it has a Missouri setting, and I thought I might want to record it for Wolfner. After reading it, I thought not: it is one of the most depressing books I ever read! It starts out with a young couple picnicking on the Platte River in Nebraska with their baby. The wife drowns. That is the beginning of a downward spiral that sucks the life out of both father and son. The young husband decides to go back to Missouri to live with his father, only to find that the  father had died the very morning of his arrival. The book is one depressingly sad event after another. It is well written, and draws the reader into the story, but there are not even brief moments of joy or peace to offset all the tragedies. I was glad to finish the book; it left me depressed and unsatisfied.

A few weeks later, I discovered that the author had written a ‘Prelude to Casting Stones’ Kindle book, which is only 17 pages, so probably is more like a short story, and just recently finished another Kindle book, or 32-page short story, ‘Conclusions – Casting Stones’.  From user reviews, it appears that these two books flesh out ‘Casting Stones’, and the conclusion seems to give some hope, which was sorely lacking in the main book. I’m not sure why an author would do it this way, instead of putting it all together into one (hopefully much better) book, but I have purchased the other two, hoping they will make it a better story (and I may record it after all!). Fortunately, all three books were very inexpensive.

220 pages