This is Where It Ends by Cindy K. Sproles

This is Where It Ends by Cindy K. Sproles
Series: a standalone
Publisher: Revell on June 27, 2023

REVIEW BY VERA DAY

It’s the early 1900s. Minerva Jenkins lives alone on a mountain in Kentucky. She’s ninety-four years old, and she’s been widowed for three decades. Her husband made her promise to keep his secret. She buried it in a box next to his grave. But the thing is, even she doesn’t know what’s in the box. She doesn’t know exactly what the secret is.

Probably stolen gold.

To survive alone on a mountain for so long, you know Minerva’s got to have a lot of grit. Sproles takes us deep inside Minerva’s mind. She’s not only full of grit, but wisdom, patience, and love for her dead husband. She’s also grown humorously cantankerous as shown through her dialogue. Take, for instance, this bit when she responds to Del, a visitor to the mountain who is trying to get her attention:

You look like a right smart man, bein from the city an all. I’ve lost count of the times you’ve called my name. What do you want me to do? Tie a ribbon around your pinkie so you can remember? Reckon you got me unless you feel the need to call my name . . . again.

-Cindy K. Sproles, This Is Where It Ends

As for the setting, I enjoyed the fragrant wisteria and the whispering river. I sighed at the sunset descriptions. And I appreciated the very real, aggressive nature of the kudzu on the hill behind Minerva’s cabin. She describes the vines as snake-like, with tentacles, adorning the gates of Hell, choking living things… In real life, I’ve seen whole houses covered in the stuff until there’s nothing left but a hill of green leaves. I once had lunch with friends in Virginia, and when I came back out, the kudzu at the edge of the parking lot had hooked around my front tire!

Back to Minerva:

Minerva suffers with grief, loneliness, guilt, and anger. But love covers a multitude of sins. Love is powerful. It hacks away at her isolation and pain like Del’s ax hacks away at the kudzu.

This book is slow and contemplative. Minerva repeats herself (with a little different attitude each time). But it’s not boring. It’s captivating, just like every Christmas when your grandpa tells the same story about the snapping turtle and the ignorant city feller, and you still love hearing it. (A true story in my own family, by the way.) So just a caution to other readers: this is the sort of story you have to read at an unhurried pace to take it all in, learn from Minerva’s wisdom, and glean the author’s Godly message.

Overall, this thought-provoking, emotional read earns five literary fish from me!

I read an advanced copy of This Is Where It Ends through NetGalley.