Eden Springs Book

This novella was something I devoured in less than three hours, truly a book that I could not set down until the last page. I picked it up just on the cover alone at the used book store, and knew nothing of what I was reading until finishing. What I began to believe was that the style of the writing kept making me feel it was based partly on true events- turns out I was right.

This novella follows a preacher, Benjamin Purnell, and how he first began building his following that eventually became a thriving colony/cult back in the early 1900's. The amount of things that he and his followers dabbled in through the years was astonishing.

The novella starts with a scene of a gravedigger whom is to bury a coffin that contains a 68 year old woman, unfortunately the crudely made coffin breaks open and it is not a 68 year old woman that he sees. Deciding to put the lid back on and finishing the burial the story switches to the goings on at the colony/cult .

While it does follow only a few main characters, mainly a few young girls and how they saw things. The author is able to develop those characters very well early on in the book. There was no lacking in visualizing all those that had come there to stay and what the place had to look like.

The ending did make me gasp, as I was not quite ready for the coffin reveal for the second time. The novella is engrossing from beginning to end.

I loved that it was not all about what ended up happening in the end to this colony. It was not totally focused on accusations and media coverage (newspapers). The story had the right balance between what could have happened and what did happen without destroying the original plot.