Add to that the alternate history of Ronald Reagan, and the plot becomes annoying. If you are going to write about Native Americans in Oregon, don’t erase the real ones. First, it’s not based on real folklore and the Native American tribe and reservation are fictionalized. It would be a more suspenseful, tighter, and far finer story if the entire element of Native American folklore were excised. These people are fully realized, complex, interesting people for whom we come to care deeply.īut then there is the plot, which just seems to never decide what it wants to be. There’s the two women who died in that awful accident, gone but never forgotten, grief for their loss animating Dobbs, Nick, Sam, and Trina. Sam and Trina’s father struggling with his own grief while trying to raise his children alone. There’s Sam’s best friend Toad and his uncle whose own sorrows will wring your heart. I cared about the people in the story and not just the four who are the focus of the story. I am very conflicted about The Mercy of the Tide. It is a gorgeously written book that merges the sly wonder of magical realism and alternate history with the depth and characterization of literary fiction.' Keith Rosson paints outside the typical genre lines with his brilliant debut novel. Meanwhile, Sheriff Dave Dobbs and Deputy Nick Hayslip must try to put their own sorrows aside to figure out who, or what, is wreaking havoc on their once-idyllic town.

At the heart of the story are Sam Finster, a senior in high school mourning the death of his mother, and his sister Trina, a nine-year-old deaf girl who denies her grief by dreaming of a nuclear apocalypse as Cold War tensions rise. The Mercy of the Tidefollows four people drawn irrevocably together by a recent tragedy as they do their best to reclaim their lives leading them all to a discovery that will change them and their town forever.

But then strange things start happening a human skeleton is unearthed in a local park and mutilated animals begin appearing, seemingly sacrificed, on the town s beaches. A sleepy coastal town, where crime usually consists of underage drinking down at a Wolf Point bonfire.

The mercy of the tide by keith rosson