Faith ‘n’ Fiction Roundtable: Daisy Chain by Mary E. DeMuth

For Faith ‘n’ Fiction Saturday this week, I participated in a round table discussion with several other bloggers about:

Daisy Chain by Mary E. DeMuth (book 1 in the Defiance Texas trilogy) (Zondervan, 2009), 368 pages

Brief book summary and overview

Set in 1977, Daisy Chain focuses on Jed, the 14-year-old son of a small-town Texas pastor. When his best friend Daisy disappears one night, we get to see inside his far-from-ideal home life — and meet several townspeople — in the midst of the disappearance that rocks the town.

I enjoyed reading this book quite a bit, although the time lapses were awkward (and these weren’t resolved to my satisfaction even in the next two books). The book’s ending took courage, I thought. I’m glad DeMuth made the choice she did there.

And now a small part of the discussion, which is spread out over the blogs of all the participants, divided topically.

Ending, back story

Hannah: The writing definitely kept me engaged in Daisy Chain.

Story-wise (yes, I’m going there), all I could think about was the ending. What did everyone think? In some ways, the whole book felt like back story to me.

Michelle: I totally agree about the story. I felt like we always knew what the conclusion was going to be, and like you said, it felt like it was all back story. And because of that, I really didn’t think it was going to effect me when it finally happened. But, it did. Mostly I just felt so sad for Jed!

For more of the conversation, visit

• Ignorant Historian
• The Point
• Life in Review
• Dadsthots’s blog
• My Friend Amy