Review – The Dead Whisper On

Canada Mac lifted the overflowing can to heave its contents into the sanitation truck when she thought she heard a raspy voice whisper, “Seven o’clock, The Mint,” her dad’s favorite watering hole. She lowered the garbage can to the ground, and spun around only to see a shadowy swirl of mist merge with the garbage truck’s shadow. It had sounded like her father’s voice, but that wasn’t possible. He died eleven years ago. He had promised to contact her from the “other side,” but hadn’t, though she’d spent many wakeful nights waiting. She wanted to believe because she lived with the ache of his loss every day. Could her father have found a way to call out to her after all these years?

Join Canada Mac, former explosives-miner in the copper and precious metal mines of Butte, Montana, now sanitation engineer after the town’s glory days of mining faded away. When she agrees to join the secretive network of what she believes are the living dead? to find her father. Now she lives in a junk-filled trailer on the outskirts of town, is alienated from her mother, and drives a 1972 Dodge Charger as she begins her first mission working with the Shadows. Completely unaware of what the ensuing tasks will demand of her, or how the unexplained epidemic of spontaneous combustions of neighbors and friends that leave small piles of smoking soot will shock her senses. She had to know if the voice was indeed her father.

Add the Shadows who whisper to her, mysterious Keros who guides her, ghosts that haunt her and a golem that terrifies her, and this spine-tingling faith-based chiller becomes one of those page-turners you can’t put down.

Hines’ contemporary supernatural fantasy centers on a battle of good versus evil. It shows Canada Mac’s transformation from a grieving young woman into a strong, intelligent and clever leader, as she battles the demons from her past that threaten to overtake her beloved town. Hine’s underlying message is one of hope and learning to trust yourself and others. Hines’ strong religious connotation is in the vein of Stephen King’s The Stand.