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Sunday, December 15, 2013

First Pre-release Reviews for "Heart Chants," #2 in Mystery Series, Encouragingly Wonderful


This is an apprehensive time. The digital formats for Heart Chants arrived the other day and I sent them to readers who indicated they would be willing to read, and perhaps review, pre-release copies of this novel that is strongly dependent on the Navajo creation story.


Heart Chants is #2 in the Phillip McGuire mystery/suspense series. Tortured Truths, #1 in the series, came out in October.

Phillip is a burnt-out foreign correspondent who, after being kidnapped and tortured by the Hezbollah in Beirut and released, says enough is enough. He quits journalism and returns to his college town of Lawrence, KS to own and run a bar where adventures come his way.


Heart Chants has a major character who is half-Navajo and half-white who believes he is a witch and knows how to create the largest sandpainting every created and do a chant that will reopen the gates to the
Holy People, from whom he can acquire new gifts to deal with the White Man.

Two reviews have come in now, one of them from a direct reservation art dealer with the Navajo since 1985. Here's what Richard Sutton had to say:

Master storyteller Randy Attwood scores again. This time, he’s traced an unexpected, jarring intersection of cultures and bruised mental states that leads the reader into the deepest shadows. Beliefs can sustain a people when all else fails. Sometimes, belief must be tempered with understanding. When that is lacking, evil seeps in. Heart Chants illustrates how even evil done for reasons of restoring harmony is simply, evil. His evocative descriptions of Southwestern vistas and his detail rich research into the Navajo culture, pay back in an absorbing reading experience.

Seattle area author Sean Bennick in a longer review was also very positive. That review can be found on Goodreads here and if you are member of Goodreads or join up for free you can put Heart Chants on your to read list. You'll see a "want to read" button. Last I check 220 people had put Tortured Truths on their to-read list.


You can't pre-order the book, but if you are interested, just email me and I'll send you an alert when the book is available. It should be out early next year. randyattwood@hotmail.com

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