Sherry Robinson – författare

A 2019 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Winner, Bronze, Religious (Adult Fiction) 

A 2019 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Finalist (Fiction: General Adult and Religious) 

Finalist in the Fiction: Religious category of the 2020 International Book Awards

Who killed Grayson Armstrong, a preacher in small-town Mercy, Kentucky, with a controversial vision for his dying church? His untimely death has everyone talking and everyone trying to understand who they thought he was. "Twelve years ago, the conservative New Hope Baptist Church wasn''t quite prepared for its new minister, Grayson Armstrong. Now, the town gathers to mourn his death, though not all who knew him grieve. The story of Grayson''s controversial tenure unfolds through the perspectives of his wife, children, and the citizens of Mercy.

"As Grayson''s funeral ends, his story is told in a round-robin of voices. Chapters are brief, sometimes no more than a page long, and each character speaks with a firm, distinctive voice, with enough backstory given to make them engaging and credible.

"This story has depth; characters'' recollections and experiences result in a complex, multidimensional view of Grayson. It becomes apparent that, while some benefited from his compassion and understanding, others resented the changes he forced on them. These included abolishing the choir, removing stained-glass windows, and renaming the church Ignite Community Church-decisions driven more by ego than by fellowship.

"The story''s pulse quickens in time with Grayson''s increase in proposed changes and how they stirred dissent. It shows deepening divisions, rumors flying, and church members feeling the chill of alienation. Grayson''s wife struggles to accept her husband lavishing time on his parishioners at the expense of time spent with his children, and his oldest son adds his account of his father''s rejection. What begins as a story of normal change and adjustment shifts to something darker.

"Grayson''s successful defeat of an effort to oust him does little to lower the story''s tension, built through skillful opposing examples: a non-churchgoing waitress found him to be a sympathetic listener, while a meek, elderly widow felt shut out of the church she''d once found comfort in. A portrait of the town emerges as an alcoholic veteran describes the once-thriving but now abandoned plant he and other homeless men take refuge in; others describe church traditions going back generations.

"The fact that Grayson''s premature death is not explained looms large in the story, driving it to an unexpected but realistic conclusion. Throughout, the book withholds judgement of Grayson and those around him, leaving that space for readers to fill. Themes of obligation and the limits of idealistic altruism are tied together.

"Noteworthy for the questions that it raises, Blessed is an appealing, thought-provoking work of contemporary Christian fiction."-Foreword Reviews Clarion Review

Much like the sturdy bones of the centuries-old house in Echo Her Lovely Bones, the women who inhabited its rooms are bound together through the letters they leave in the attic.

In these letters, which form the novel, the women reveal their dreams, their disappointments, their griefs, and their hopes. Each letter moves us through the female experience that is shaped as much by historical context as it is by each woman''s own life.

The women of Echo Her Lovely Bones include: a daughter reluctantly leaving the comfort of her family in northern Virginia to settle in the harsh Kentucky frontier as a new bride; a newly emancipated slave learning what it means to be free; a young law student in the Roaring Twenties testing her family''s (and cultural) expectations for women; a woman wrestling with a dark family secret and debilitating depression; a traditional wife and mother beginning to question those traditional values; her now-grown daughter living out the repercussions of her mother''s abandonment; a woman being forced to strike out on her after divorcing her husband of two decades; and her daughter, twenty years later, struggling with family issues in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These women echo the resilience of generations of women and affirm the importance of women finding their own voice.

Echo Her Lovely Bones is a special rerelease in a new second edition of Robinson''s first novel, originally titled My Secrets Cry Aloud). Echo Her Lovely Bones includes a beautiful new cover by Annelisa Hermosilla, Foreword by Silas House (author of Lark Ascending, September 2022), a new chapter titled "Misty Newsom Albright November 1, 2020," Reading Group Guide, and Author''s Note.