Michael Brown. Miriam Carey. Trayvon Martin. Tanisha Anderson. We all know their names, and every time their names are spoken, we hear the ringing alarms that tell us that racism is as alive and well today as ever in American history. Now this same dark history is brought into the light in a Christian novel called The Sanctum by Pamela King Cable.

Thrown into the care of her alcoholic grandfather, Neeley McPherson is raised by his elderly farmhand named Gideon, a black man she grows to love. In the winter of 1959, she is only thirteen but has already experienced true horrors. When Gideon is accused of stealing a watch and using a whites-only restroom, she stands defiantly against everything wrong in the world and breaks him out of jail.

Catfish Cole, Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon of the Carolinas, pursues them across the Blue Ridge Mountains. After ice sends Gideon’s truck down a steep slope, they hike through a blizzard and arrive at a wolf sanctuary where Neeley crosses the bridge between the real and the supernatural.

There she discovers her grandfather’s deception, confronts the Klan, finds her faith in God, and uncovers the shocking secrets of the family who befriends her. The act of providing sanctuary leads to another tragedy but second chances and the defeat of prejudice grant Neeley’s most passionate desire.

In prose that touches on the shadowy noir of Gothic Southern fiction, this tale of suffering carries readers through the darkness and into the light of hope…hope for the characters and hope for America. Blending the awareness of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird with the social astuteness of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and a faith in the transformational power of love found in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, this timeless coming-of-age novel is a powerful commentary on what we once were…and what we can all become.

5 stars!

Pam’s other novels are also steeped in Bible-belt mystery and paranormal suspense. Televenge, the story of a woman who realizes her megachurch is actually a religious cult, has attracted attention from Fox News, CBS Atlanta, a major Hollywood film producer, and bloggers and media outlets worldwide.

She is also the author of Southern Fried Women, a collection of short stories that touch the heart.

Writing about her own fiction, she says:

“For me, it is within sanctuaries of brick and mortar; places of clapboard and canvas that characters hang ripe for picking. From the primitive church services of the mountain clans to the baptisms and sacraments in cathedrals and synagogues all over the world. From the hardworking men and women who testify in every run-down house of God in America to the charismatic high-dollar high-tech evangelicals televised in today’s megachurches, therein lie stories of unspeakable conflict, the forbidden, and often, the unexplained.”