The Water Keeper by Charles Martin ~ Book Review

Murphy Shepard was a dedicated and courageous part of a team that used to rescue girls who had been taken and were bound for the sex trade operating out of Florida.  But now he is holed up on an island caretaking a church that nobody attends while he grieves the loss of two key people in his life.   When a young woman named Angel shows up at the church Murphy realizes she is headed for very kind of fate that he has dedicated his life to saving girls just like her from.  A runaway who has met the wrong people, she is part of a "party boat" floating through Florida's waterways not knowing she is about to become part of modern day slavery.  As Murphy heads down to the south of Florida to grieve and to lay his friend and mentor to rest he finds a beautiful former drug addict and dancer that needs his help finding her missing daughter, a young stowaway looking to understand her past, an ex-con who just wants to go home and live out his last days and a faithful Labrador he finds swimming in the ocean.  Together they form an unlikely team to find the woman's missing daughter even as Murphy's secret past is catching up with him.  

Charles Martin is one of my favorite authors because of the depth and multi layers he puts into his stories and the way he weaves his words to create his images to convey the setting, characters and emotions.  Every character is so rich and not wasted, very real in their emotions and reactions to what life has thrown at them.  The settings almost become a character in and of themselves.  His stories are always about redemption, hope and healing from very deep hurt.  They are always a journey that he takes the reader on that leaves their own emotions bare.  This story though it did have all those elements for me, did leave me a bit confused at times.   There is much description of the Florida Intercoastal Waterways which at times left me lost because I don't know the area in the least so I found myself starting to skim over some of that.  And I was confused at the ending until I went back and re-read the 1st chapter and then it made total sense.  I have just found out that this is actually the first in a trilogy so that explains too, the questions I had when it was all over.  Though at times frustrated with the character of Summer (the mom of the missing girl), I loved the character of Clay and am looking forward to seeing where he will go in coming installments.  Though not near knocking off the pedestal my three favorites of his (Water From My Heart, When Crickets Cry and Wrapped in Rain) this is a good read that sheds a light on the dark world of modern day slavery within the sex trade in America.  

My rating:  8/10