Riding Through Shadows - Softcover

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Sharon Ewell Foster is a former instructor, writer-editor, and logistician for the U.S. Department of Defense. Her previous publications include a daily wire news column and devotionals for Daily Guideposts. The mother of two, Sharon makes her home in Maryland.

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The Christy Award-winning Foster shifts between the 1960s and the 1980s to narrate the life of a young black woman named Shirley. As a little girl living in the North during the 1960s, Shirley wasn't exposed to the overt racism her peers in the South experienced daily. But when her father was killed in Vietnam, and her mother was committed to a mental institution, Shirley slipped between the cracks. Then Mother Johnson, a distant relative, came to take her home and fight for her spiritual salvation. Demonic forces, particularly one called "Child Killer Shirley," illustrate this battle for Shirley's soul, but the way they pop in and out of the plot is confusing. While still demonstrating Foster's excellence in providing a balanced look at people as individuals rather than groups, this novel is overshadowed by a dizzying plot that bounces back and forth between time and place and ends abruptly with a note that the story will continue in Passing into Light (no publication date given). Foster's fans will demand this title, but steer new readers to Passing by Samaria or Ain't No River for a better taste of Foster's talents.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author of the finely crafted Passing by Samaria (a Christy Award winner for best debut Christian novel) and the quirky, light romantic follow-up Ain't No River offers this disappointing attempt at portraying a young girl's life during the racial turmoil of the late 1960s. Eight-year-old Shirley doesn't know what will unhinge her mentally ill mother next small incidents like her brother not eating his peas or major disasters like her father departing for Vietnam. When Shirley's father is killed in action and her mother is hospitalized after a mysterious house fire, Shirley is shipped off to live with Mother Johnson, a spiritual counselor who wants to counteract the dark spiritual forces at work in Shirley's life. As the novel bounces between two time settings the 1960s and 1980s things become choppy. Characters are confusingly given similar names (Sheri and Shirley) or referred to in odd manners (Shirley's unnamed brother is called "the offender" and "the nonpea eater" repeatedly throughout six pages). There are long rambling passages of dialogue and contrived conversations to incorporate historical figures. The spiritual presence of a demonic dark angel, "Child Killer Shirley," weakens rather than enhances the continuity of the story. Sprinkled throughout, however, are a few nuggets of wisdom and snippets of the lovely writing for which Foster is known. Unfortunately, these do not compensate for the book's narrative flaws or deeply unsatisfying ending. Foster's loyal readers should hope for more of the clarity and enjoyable storytelling she is capable of in the promised sequel.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Foster's Riding through Shadows is the story of a troubled African American child, Shirley Ferris, coming of age in East St. Louis and Alabama in the 1960s; and also of her adult self, a single mother coping with providing for her children in the mid-1980s. Young Shirley is most of the story. An exceptionally bright girl, she is plagued with a long-suffering, manic-depressive mother who teeters on insanity. Young Shirley herself is deeply depressed, imagining a playmate she calls the "little bad girl" as well as various demons who strive to kill her natural joyousness, until finally she withdraws into a disturbed silence. She's rescued by an earth mother, called "Mother." Mother's humor, down-to-earth spirituality, and boundless love begin Shirley's long road to healing. Irritatingly, Multnomah has published this powerful though sometimes maddeningly personal novel in two parts; the second installment will be called Passing into Light. John Mort
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