Also beautifully developed are Sheriff Dodds and Sam’s closest friend, Todd, known familiarly as “Toad”. The most interesting character and unlikely hero here is Hayslip. It’s true that the gifts of highly capable children vary widely in scope and range, and that every child is unique, but the vocabulary and abstract concepts Rosson bestows on this kid are just not within the realm of the possible, and so Trina isn’t real to me until later in the book, when things other than her obsession with nuclear holocaust are used in the development of her character. Part of this is just pure fickle bad luck for the author I actually taught deaf kids of the same age as Trina, as well as gifted kids that age and in one instance, a gifted deaf kid that age. However, I found Trina to be the weakest element here, and it was the other characters that made this story work for me. The teaser for this novel tells us that the story centers around Sam and Trina, and since the author generally writes the teaser, that must be his intention. Nobody knows about his past with Melissa, and he finds terrible ways to keep her memory alive. Deputy Nick Hayslip–a Vietnam veteran who has no patience for the madness associated with that category, a vet who figures that you go home when the war is over, you put on your clothes and go to work and therapy is for losers–is coming unstuck. Someone else is missing Melissa too, though he can’t say so. The blow has left everyone reeling and on edge. A recent head-on collision claimed the lives of Melissa Finster, mother of Sam and Trina, and June Dobbs, the town’s beloved librarian and wife of Sheriff Dave Dobbs.

The tiny town of Riptide, Oregon is knee deep in grief. This book will be for sale February 21, 2017, and those that love good fiction with a working class perspective will want a copy. Thank you, Net Galley and Meerkat Press for the DRC, which I received free of charge for this honest review. Set in a tiny, depressed town on the Oregon Coast during the Reagan Administration, things start out dark, and they’re about to get a whole lot darker. The Mercy of the Tide is Keith Rosson’s debut novel, and it’s a strong one.

The mercy of the tide by keith rosson