Review: I sacrificed sleep to finish this book!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 14, 2012
The opening sentence of Janice Daugharty's "The Sacrifice" is, "At first sight of the house, Ruth felt she heard the shock gong of a horror movie."  Never did Ruth's thoughts serve her better.  She and her friend Mandy were on a long walk, and from the east bank of the Alapaha River in southeast Georgia Ruth had spotted a house she had never seen before.  Right in the midst of her own and her Grandpoppee's territory, someone had built a nice house on the river and it was hard to spot, difficult to see unless you walked right up on it.  Ruth just had to take a peek inside, but Mandy stayed back, not so brave as Ruth was in going up and looking in the windows of the assumed vacant house.  Ruth was wrong. There was someone inside and he fit the thoughts of "the shock gong of a horror movie."Rewis was an escaped inmate from the prison, along with another man, and Rewis was a serial killer.  There was no way that he would allow Ruth to run away now that she had seen him.  Mandy was terrified once she saw what was happening.  Rewis grabbed Ruth and eventually stabbed Mandy and kept Ruth as his hostage in a harrowing and suspenseful trip in a stolen boat down the Alapaha River on his way to Florida.  Using Ruth's life as insurance that he would get there, Rewis takes off on his trip with nothing but cruelty and murder and a loaded gun in mind as he makes his way down the river.As is characteristic of Janice Daugharty's writing, the scenery is described in detail so that the reader has no question about where the characters are and what they are seeing.  Each tupelo branch that was grabbed to pull the boat up on a sandbar to moccasins hanging overhead, I visualized each minute of their frightening and water-soaked boat ride moments as well as Rewis's murderous rampages and Ruth's moments of trying to escape.  I appreciate the flashbacks into the lives of the characters because these give the background of their lives before the kidnapping happened, otherwise the reader wouldn't know much about them.Ruth has faith in God and uses her faith to give her strength.  Although some readers prefer not to read religious references in novels, I'm sure it is not by coincidence that the kidnapped character is named Ruth.  When staying with the other escapee who had found her and thinking she was safe at last, Bobby, Rewis's escape partner, tells her the story of Ruth in the Bible and makes Ruth laugh at the humor he puts into it, but that earlier Ruth had made sacrifices, too.  The religious references are not overdone, but embolden the character and the strength of the 17-year-old hostage.This is a very suspenseful novel. I read it in two evenings because I couldn't put it down.  I needed to know what was going to happen to Ruth.  She had several attempts at escape and several opportunities to put Rewis out of commission, but her reasons for not carrying out any of these were for Ruth's own personal beliefs and fears.  She took the high road when she could have saved herself by sacrificing the lives of others.The twist at the end I never saw coming.  Other reviewers saw hints of it, apparently, but I'm glad I didn't because it made the end just that much better for me.  This book speaks of many different kinds of sacrifices, and from both of these characters we see the meaning of the word and of greater sacrifice.This is a highly recommended book for its character-driven plot, its richness of place and depth of character development and its place in literary fiction.  Characters and locations from other of Ms. Daugharty's books appear, also, which lends continuity to the settings of her wonderful stories of life in southeast Georgia.