Life in Defiance

Ouisie Pepper knows a secret. The whole town of Defiance, Texas would like to know what she knows. But Ouisie is good at keeping her mouth shut. She’s done it her whole life, especially as the battered wife of Defiance’s minister, Hap Pepper.

Her best friend is Emory Chance, a woman who once had an affair with Ouisie’s preacher husband. Without Emory and the bottle hidden in Ouisie’s bedroom, life would be unbearable for the reverend’s wife. Since Emory’s found the Lord, she’s a different woman, and one of only a few who know about Hap’s violent tendencies. One of the few Ouisie trusts with that knowledge.

Ouisie’s children know. They’ve witnessed it, been on the receiving end of it. Her little girl has a lisp and is growing old before she’s grown. Her son, Jed, already bitter after the death of his friend Daisy, grows angrier and more belligerent as his mother continues to keep secrets and refuses to protect herself or her children from Hap. But Ouisie guards her husband’s reputation because, as a wife who fails to make her husband happy, surely his fits of temper are her own fault.

Somewhere in Defiance, the man who stole young Daisy Chance’s life still lives and breathes and plans his next move. And then there’s Elijah, a self-proclaimed prophet, who shows up out of nowhere and befriends Ouisie.

Her life is spinning out of control. She’s on a collision course with disaster, and too afraid to take the reins and stop the headlong rush. Will she find her courage before her world crashes in around her…before her children are forever destroyed by life and Hap Pepper’s cruelty?

Life in Defiance is the third and final book in the Defiance, Texas trilogy. Mary DeMuth has created a town full of living, breathing characters with wants and needs, problems and secrets. They’re not perfect people, and they live in a far from perfect world. This author is a master at capturing human emotion and pouring it onto a written page. My heart bled as Ouisie suffered under Hap’s heavy hand and heartless comments. My mother’s heart cried for Jed and Sissy as they cringed beneath their father’s temper and their mother’s inability to fight back. I longed to comfort Emory, who lived with not only her daughter’s murder, but her own failure as a mother prior to Daisy’s death. No one creates emotion like DeMuth. Every book in the Defiance series is a masterpiece. Each of the first two seemed to reach a pinnacle of excellence, leaving me to wonder how the next story could possibly reach or exceed its impact. Each time, DeMuth answered with another perfect, powerful follow-up. Absolutely unforgettable.