Local author Bettie Lennett Denny has re-published her novel Angel Unfolding giving story lovers another opportunity to enjoy the unusual twists and turns of her mind.
The book is a tale of victims and the perpetrators of domestic violence, Me Too (written before the movement), organ donors, corruption in high places, the criminal justice system and the everyday people affected by these events.
Denny’s main protagonist, reporter Murphy Gardiner, is working in present day Montana, in a town like many places, where domestic violence goes unreported or there is no enforcement. That is where this story begins.
Gardiner starts a journalistic investigation when the body of a known wife-beater is discovered in his home several months after his death. It’s pretty obvious “who done it” because the wife is still living in the house with their three-year-old son.
Angel McQuinn, the long suffering victim of the abuse and her child, become a study of our social justice system, courage and compassion.
As the story begins, Gardiner befriends McQuinn and is her witness to record events as they unfold.
[Editor’s note: Here in the United States, the female prison population is eight times higher than it was in 1980. More than eighty percent of women in state prisons have a child under the age of eighteen.]
Denny weaves together different threads to keep Angel Unfolding interesting and the reader wondering what’s going to happen next.
In the October ‘18 edition of The Southeast Examiner, Denny was interviewed as she published her Portland-based nineteenth century novel Burying My Dead. Gardiner is the protagonist in that story too.
This multi-charactered mystery story recently received the bronze IPPY award in Regional Fiction. NT
Denny’s books are available through bettiedenny.com.
