The Hickory Reading Club meeting of March thirteenth was hosted by Marcia Everett and Corless Long. In the fellowship hall of Hickory Baptist Church, St. Patrick's shamrock green decor set a spring mood for the menu of varied sliders, sides, and sweets. Jackie Stamm's devotional answered how life should be lived to serve its purpose: self-sacrificially, forgiving with love a fellow man despite his shortcomings, as God loves and forgives.
Judy Leach reviewed Tana French's mystery novel In the Woods (2007) as the night's program. This first book of the Dublin Murder Squad series develops its plot with events spanning twenty years. The bizarre 1984 disappearances of three twelve-year-old children and the murder, twenty years later, of a twelve-year-old girl near the same Knocknaree (Ireland) woods comprise intertwining mysteries, one of which Squad detectives Ryan and Maddox solve. Disappearances, murders, trauma-induced memory loss, vivid forest descriptions and imagery, archaeological digs, and friendship combine in French's "psychological thriller."
