The Other Side of Goodness

The latest installment of Griggs’s Blessed Trinity series features former stripper Gabrielle Mercedes Booker, who is now saved and attempting to live a Christ-centered life, and Jasmine Noble, an adopted child who needs a bone marrow transplant. The connections of Booker and Noble to the powerful family of ruthless Alabama legislator Lawrence Rudolph Simmons during a re-election campaign drives the story forward as politicos and town gossips descend to dig for the truth about those connections. Simmons’s calculating daughter, Paris, with her troubled marriage and selfish tendencies, is the star villain. The heroes in this story remind their foes that using shady secrets and details from their past in an attempt to destroy them is futile because God is their ultimate judge. There is repetition in the novel but it doesn’t distract from the riveting narrative. (Aug.)