David Roth is a book reviewer for the Tampa Bay Examiner. He reviewed my book and I thought I might post it here:

There are secrets in the shady, quiet little copse of a place known as Mount Laurel, Kentucky. Dark secrets. Ugly secrets. Things you don’t tell your children and things you keep forever hidden from the stark, bitter light of day.
Monica Campbell suspects, but doesn’t know. Are they dreams? Or are they memories. Or, perhaps both? Whatever they are, Monica Campbell bears the full brunt of them.
The Purging of Monica Campbell by Dorothy Joan Riley (© 2010 by Dorothy Joan Riley/ Xlibris Press ISBN 978-1-4535-6041-9) reveals the darkness. It is a thing perhaps best left in the dark.
In her biography, ‘Social worker turned artist and writer’ Dorothy Joan Riley tells us that Purging is drawn from life experience and memory, both hers and others, and she doesn’t explore too closely where that line is drawn. One rather suspects after reading this book that the reason is that the things we are shown may be as much a purging for the author as for her troubled character.
Her story, a strikingly brutal tale of family dysfunction set in the Cumberland Mountains against the backdrop of Viet Nam and the racial tensions of the 60’s has less to do with either than it does with the story of a troubled young woman whom we first meet at the tender age of thirteen, at her mother’s funeral.
The writer crafts a disturbing story, which draws you into believable characters, and keep wonderful pace through her use of dates as chapter headings…until about the 200th page. There the fast pace blurs into a syrupy spill of inky darkness that bogs on until the last ten or so pages, where it is all tied up much too quickly; much too neatly.
It was a difficult, but intriguing read, perhaps because the author is so successful in developing the characters that she forces you through the brute power of their presence to make you notice them, and empathize with them. It is this personal connection you feel to the narrator, Monica Campbell, and the author itself, that makes this such a difficult read. Or, perhaps it is that I too lived in the years and times reflected in this tale, at about the same age of the protagonist that made it such an intense read. Overused, but interesting was the repeated mention of ‘refiner’s fire’ from the book of Malachi as a metaphor for Monica’s personal purging.
Other than that singular bump in the road when the dating stops and you get lost in the passing of time, I found only one flaw – repeated use of the word ‘neither’ when ‘either’ was grammatically correct, and the hasty resolution, the book leaves you breathless and heart wrenched for Monica Campbell and her family. Despite the difficulty I had reading it, I also found I couldn’t put it down. The story, like its protagonist, is resilient.
The Purging of Monica Campbell by Dorothy Joan Riley is available at Amazon.com in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions, and from the author’s web page.


I have got to find a woman to review this! I am curious if a woman would find this as difficult to read.