Prayers and Lies, the debut novel by Sherri Wood Emmons, is set in rural Appalachia, in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia. The novel is narrated by Bethany, a young girl who lives with her 3 sisters and parents in Indianapolis, and visits the Coal River where her Mother grew up, every summer to spend time with her cousins there.

Her cousin Raena May becomes like a sister to her, and the book traces their lives as they grow together, and then apart, as their differing circumstances throw them into different worlds.

This is a page turner of a novel that I just couldn’t put down. I was immediately drawn into this book and grew to care about all the characters and had to find out what would happen to them. Family secrets slowly get revealed along the way and the tension builds until the end. Wood Emmons has done a masterful job for a first novel.