Keturah and Lord Death

It is a marvelous Friday afternoon. It is finally becoming fall here and the trees are changing colors and starting lose their leaves. What a wonderful time of the year! And on Fridays everything seems brighter and better...especially in the fall when I am ready for a weekend filled with watching football and reading good books.

Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt is a wonderful book. I started reading it because it was a finalist for the National Book Award this year. The first chapter is really strange and I wasn’t sure that I was going to finish it because I am a firm believer that life is too short and there are too many books for me to waste time reading something I don’t enjoy. However, I am really glad that I continued to read. I guess there is something to be said for sticking with a task until you finish it. Because I would have missed out on a great book had a quit reading after a page or two.

In this book, 16 year old Keturah gets lost in the woods and after several days is confronted by Death. In the book, Death is characterized as a “severe, but beautiful” man wearing a black cape and riding a black horse. Keturah is not ready to be taken by Death so she tells him a story, refusing to tell him the ending unless he lets her live another day. He grants her wish if she promises to return the next day with an ending to her story. The story she tells is about a young woman looking for her “one true love,” so Death agrees that if she finds her true love by the next day he will let her live. What transpires is a delightful story filled with romance, adventure and the supernatural. And the ending is truly surprising. It seemed so predictable until the last couple of pages. I can see how this book became a finalist for the National Book Award.