Candles Burning

By: Tabitha King, Michael McDowell

Narrated by: Carrington Macduffie

Author Michael McDowell, known for his chilling Blackwater series, left behind the unfinished manuscript of Candles Burning at his death in 1999. His close friend, Tabitha King, has taken up where he left off, weaving a Southern gothic fabric of murder, guilt, innocence, corruption, and survival, in the voices of the living and the dead.

Seven-year-old Calley Dakin is daddy's little girl, but her well-born mother persists in her contempt for the Dakin name. When her daddy is tortured and murdered by two women with no discernible motivation, Calley and her mother find themselves caught up in inexplicable events that exile them to Pensacola Beach. There, another woman awaits their presence, a woman who knows what Calley is and who seeks to control her. For Calley is no ordinary little girl.

©2006 Michael McDowell (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"[A] lightly supernatural confection....King completes it beautifully as to tone, aura, and flavor, and it's funny and intriguing, magnetically readable." (Booklist)
"A mix of magic realism and Southern gothic, this stunning collaboration moves at a hypnotic pace, like an Alabama water moccasin slipping through black water." (Publishers Weekly)

Riveting

I thoroughly enjoyed this. The transition between authors was smooth enough to make me forget there was one.

What a waste of time!

Read the few chapters and the epilogue, that will tell you the story without wasting your time. Very little happens in the rest of the book.

Great Listen!

The narrator did a fantastic job. Although the story was long I enjoyed listening to it as often as I could.

Dragged on and on

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I loved the detail in this book and I thought the writing was good. The problem is it dragged on and on without much happening. The ending was very anticlimactic as well. I felt that they left many things unexplained and the way the ending was wrapped up it almost felt like an afterthought.

Unexpected and beautiful

This story has characters of startling complexity and depth. Their inner journey is so engaging that it might be easy to miss the equally complex world through which they move, although this is a character in its own right. The narration was lovely and nuanced. Highly recommend!