I just completed The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart. It is set in Texas during the late 19th century and centers around fights for land, existence and the rather strange families involved in them.
The author lays out an exquisite use of language to describe the people and events yet for me the lushness of the words fail to meaningfully add to either the story or develop the people.
The result was that I would set the book aside for a few days and quite forget what I was reading about when I picked it up again. I am not a big fan of time swapping in books anyway, but when the author jumps around from then to now to before then and back it sometimes left me wondering what was going on.
Overall it is worth a read, but I thought there was a certain hollowness to the writing.
