cover image Angels' Share

Angels' Share

Rayme Waters. Winter Goose (www.wintergoosepublishing.com), $15.99 trade paper (282p) ISBN 978-0-9851548-8-2

In her debut novel, Waters weaves past and present to tell the tale of a troubled girl who spins off course but is given a second chance. Raised under the pot fumes of careless, on-again off-again parents%E2%80%94a father who keeps leaving and an alcoholic mother brainwashed by a cult, Cinnamon turns to fiction for solace. Shuffled back and forth to her domineering rich grandmother, she eventually succumbs to a life of delinquency and drug addiction, and starts living with her boyfriend, Kevin; one day, high on meth, he beats Cinnamon nearly to death. But her neighbor Sam, who resembles "a diminutive Clint Eastwood," offers her another life with a job at his Sonoma County winery, extending support and serving as the positive role model Cinnamon has never had. The dramatic opening image%E2%80%94when Cinnamon awakes to find her bones shattered by Kevin's beating%E2%80%94is strong, but the story loses steam throughout, as the continuous shuttling to Cinnamon's past detracts from the development of the present. As past and present come closer to fusing together, the pace picks up again in a resonating story of forgiveness, recovery, redemption, and learning to trust again. (Aug.)