The Defiance Texas Trilogy comes to a rather remarkable end in the one-of-a-kind voice of Mary E. DeMuth. Life in Defiance shows us the despicable, the tortured, the regretful, and ultimately the forgiven in this small Texas town.
Told through Louise “Ouisie” Pepper’s point of view, we get a stark picture of the home life of the despicable Preacher Hap Pepper, Ouisie’s horribly abusive pastor husband who rules her life with a literal iron fist and a hateful tongue, oblivious to personal sin but oh so quick to condemn his wife, his children, and the woman who once had an affair with him (Emory Chance).
Women who’ve experienced the horrors of physical and emotional abuse might recognize themselves in Ouisie Pepper who accepts her husband’s assaults and accusations and blames herself for failing to be the godly wife he needs. Escaping to alcohol to subdue her multiple pains, she yearns for a freedom she cannot imagine. (The vase of plastic flowers is ingenious.)
Defiance life continues under the shadow of the death of young Daisy Marie Chance (from the first novel Daisy Chain), best friend of Hap and Ouisie’s son Jed. The pall stretches through the second novel (A Slow Burn) told through the eyes of Emory Chance, Daisy’s neglectful single mom, and slides into the final novel Life in Defiance as a heavy burden lurking in the woods where Daisy’s body was found. To complicate the unsuccessful search for her killer, Ouisie thinks she knows who did it but believes it was an accident.
The original characters on display in Life in Defiance capture a real life composite of all kinds of people both in and out of the church dynamic. Emory Chance has found Jesus through her own tragedies, and she’s good to go to the next level, dragging her unlikely best friend, the nearly destroyed pastor’s wife Ouisie Pepper, with her. Between Ouisie’s gruff neighbor Ethrea Ree, who keeps secrets of her own, and Emory, Ouisie Pepper finds the friendship she desperately needs to sustain her while she begins to wonder if Hap will in fact kill her in one of his escalating rages.
When the author of a book about becoming the “perfect Christian wife” visits Ouisie after receiving an impulsively written confession of her life with Hap, the story jags in another interesting direction, none of it an improvement for Ouisie’s difficult circumstances.
In a hideous chain of events with two amazing twists, Life in Defiance rids itself of two criminals, one despicable and unrepentant and another tortured by sins and memories.
Mary’s voice stamps her as unique, her characterizations prove her ability to get inside people’s heads, and her stories meld unusual personal journeys with the pain of real life experiences. Life in Defiance concludes this trilogy in a powerful and uplifting fashion after the pain and dread of seeing a town full of people in desperate need of healing and closure.
Thanks to Zondervan and http://www.blogtourspot.com/defiance-tour/ for my copy.
Father, you’ve brought Mary along through many journeys, and her writing has been a beacon to so many. Continue to guide her and uplift her spirit as she travels this trip of life and writes as she goes. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Into the Fire 
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