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Beaufort Falls

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The characters of Beaufort Falls:

Molly age 8 and Tessie age 5 are the daughters of JD. Both children are well experienced in keeping a spotless house and making dinner for their father. And they both know the consequences that will be paid if it's not done perfectly.

Molly is little Tessie's guardian angel until she is placed in a mental hospital for children after setting a fire at her home. As mysterious things start to happen on her first night in the hospital she quickly becomes an outsider and keeps to herself until she meets Mickey or RatBoy as she fondly calls him.

After Molly is taken away Tessie has to take full responsiblity for the housework and cooking for her father. She knows she must be perfect or her punishment will be severe. But this abuse comes to an end when JD's lady friend Anna, who is also a social worker, sees him beating little Tessie. She's taken away and is placed in the home of Anna who is quite taken with her sweet, loving personality.

JD is a God fearing, ex-circuit preacher/mechanic who rules the girls with strong punishment, preaching and prayers. He also enjoys filing law suits against anyone that crosses him, including the hospital where he is treated after wrecking his truck, being poisoned, bitten by hundreds of baby Black Widow spiders and attacked by Ghost the dog.

Charlie is the ex-lover of JD's deceased wife Eliza who was the only woman he ever really loved. But Charlie has a problem. His hobby is collecting and preserving human heads and calling them his friend.

Verbena is the ex-girlfriend of JD and later Charlie but when she discovers Charlie's hobby she finds herself living in a cave in hopes of not becoming a part of his collection.

Spike and Virgil are 2 hit-men hired to kill JD before he tries to sue the only hospital in town. Their lack of success leaves the hospital director up in air since they were paid before the job was actually done.

Ghost is a mysteriously beautiful white dog that protects Molly and Tessie and loves them both dearly.

Eliza - is JD's late wife and mother of Molly and Tessie. Eliza died when Tessie was 2 but she's not really gone. She watches over Molly and Tessie as they deal with their father and hopes to one day bring the 2 girls back together. She will stop at nothing to protect her children and will use everything within her spiritual powers to bring revenge on anyone that hurts them.

And then there is Mickey (RatBoy). He can't talk but he can read peoples minds and feelings. He can also appear just about anywhere and be seen only when he wants to be seen. He and a group of other boys from the hospital are preparing for the upcoming "Plan" that will save them all. But who is he and why are his feelings for Molly so deep and protective?

Beaufort Falls was one of the most complete books I've ever read. You have the bad guys and good guys but you also have the cluts that give the book humor. This turned out to be a book that I didn't want to put down until I had read every page.

Beaufort Falls is the first published novel written by Mari Sloan. The setting is in a small southern town in Alabama during the 1970's.

"This was the country everybody left to go somewhere else, leaving the town with two filling stations, a school and fourteen churches, but few residents."

The author cleverly keeps you reading while she takes you on a fast-paced paranormal ride and exploits family dysfunction at its worst. Written in a very descriptive style, Mari brings passion and intensity to her characters. Then, you empathize with them.

As the forces of good and evil unravel to expose the secret of Beaufort Falls, you will become fascinated and emotionally affected as this town becomes unhinged.

J. D. Parsons, town mechanic, while raising his two young daughters encounters many mysterious happenings. J D is an evil man who abuses his children; physically and mentally while pretending to be religious. His dead wife, Eliza, returns from her grave to protect her girls from evil and to avenge her murder. While on earth as a spirit she also searches for her lost baby.

J D is stalked by a white furry dog with supernatural powers, deadly spider attacks, and venomous snake bites, but these torments have no effect upon him and so he lives through many attempts at his demise! He also reluctantly relinquishes Molly to a social worker who sends her to a local psychiatric hospital. There, she meets wonderful children who will tear at your heart strings. These lonely youngsters band together for salvation and in unity of purpose they protect Molly.

Eliza haunts her maniacal murderer and influences her demented ex-lover Charlie to avenge her own death. Charlie and Eliza previously had an extra marital relationship which resulted in her giving birth to Charlie's child while married to Parsons.

Vividly shown are the effects of cruelty and neglect upon children. However, Sloan has made this story whimsical, entertaining, and funny when you confront death and the spirit world. This book is in the stylistic nature of becoming a Hollywood movie thriller.

Clark Isaacs
Reviewer

I love this book.It is one of my all time favorites.Brilliant writing and imaginative storyline that draws you in and keeps you in utter suspense.I highly recommend this wonderful work .Many thanks to the author and I anxiously await the sequel.

My friend and former colleague Mark Henderson recommended "Beaufort Falls" to me. Mark is a reliable judge of literary quality - his own work includes an anthology of well-wrought stories and the superb novel "Perilaus" - so I bought a copy. I was not disappointed!

"Nothing is what it seems, in Beaufort Falls," declares the cover. Indeed, in this small community in the wilds of Alabama, only the mentally disturbed seem sane. This remarkable tale of interpersonal dynamics and emotional and physical abuse isn't comfortable reading, but it's gripping, engaging and alleviated by delightful moments of comedy, especially in the episodes involving Spike and Virgil, probably the two most incompetent hired assassins in literature. The strongest features of the novel, apart from the evocative prose writing and the excellent characterization, are the author's brilliantly controlled point-of-view switches and the sharp (and often welcome) contrasts of mood and atmosphere.

The multiple interlocking plot-lines defy easy summarizing, but the essentials are as follows. Southern Bible-thumper John Duke Parsons abused and finally murdered his wife, Eliza, and killed one of her babies (who wasn't his). Now he physically and emotionally abuses his little daughters, who love each other intensely. JD suffers a series of near-fatal accidents, apparently engineered by the unquiet ghost of Eliza, whose primary concern is to protect her surviving children. His grip on reality gradually slackens. The effect is both comic and disturbing. When the elder daughter, Molly, is consigned to the local children's psychiatric hospital - a Dickensian institution - and thus deprived of her sister's company, her isolation is movingly portrayed; even her mother's ghost has limited power to protect and comfort her. A group of boys at the hospital meet in a nearby cave, creating a children's fantasy land into which they intend to introduce Molly. Anna Johnson, a splendidly determined Family and Children's Services officer, does her best to protect the children, but regulations restrict her options. Meanwhile, the unlikely hero of the tale - Charlie Callaghan, a Revivalist preacher and psychopathic killer who preserves and befriends the severed heads of his innocent victims - is fleeing from justice and ends up working at the psychiatric hospital, dressed as a woman. These strands of story (and I haven't mentioned them all!) are adroitly brought together to produce a hair-raising climax situated in the boys' fantasy-land cave. At that point, I couldn't have stopped reading in exchange for a winning lottery ticket.

Mari Sloan resolves the complexities of plot, characters and relationships with satisfying aplomb. A particular achievement was to have made a credible, sympathetic character out of the ghost mother, Eliza. "Beaufort Falls" is an impressive debut novel. It is highly distinctive and a very satisfying reading experience. I recommend it strongly, and I look forward keenly to the promised sequel, "Road Trip".

Mari Sloan's debut novel, Beaufort Falls, is a stunning achievement, and this book will touch on every emotion you have...laughter, tears, anger...and a righteous sense of injustice for the children involved. The young heroine, Molly, will wring your heart and you will love her by the end of the first chapter. There is a supernatural side to Beaufort Falls that will have you looking over your shoulder and wondering just what caused that noise you just heard? I could not put it down...and neither will you. Good for you, Mari! I, for one, will be waiting with bated breath for the sequel....

Rita Hsu Syers, Author
PureHeart
Mystery of the Crying Ghost

The characters quickly became members of my family (even the villains), and I sat down with them and read until I finished the book. Mari Sloan may be new on the book scene, but I'm sure we haven't see the last of her. Keep it up, I want to see the next one!

Everybody wants J.D. Parsons dead, including his dead wife. Maybe that's because he is abusing his two children. But one of those kids, eight year old Molly, wants to do something about it. She definitely inherited her mother's determination to make things right, especially for her little sister, Tessie. Some very strange and wonderful creatures help her along the way.

Then there's Charlie Callahan. He knows all about the missing sheriff of Beaufort Falls, and a few other folks who disappear. That's the other part of the intriguing tale of this sleepy town in Georgia. As author Mari Sloan says, nothing is what it seems to be in Beaufort Falls.

Mari Sloan has woven all these interesting, bizarre, funny, and touching stories together in a masterful way. Beaufort Falls is a very different type of mystery, with multiple POVs even in the same chapter, but Mari handles it beautifully and I loved it. It's not a detective story, but there are dead people and a case has to be solved. Everything worked.