By Kathi Baron
WestSide Books, $16.95, 262 pages
Young, talented violinist Cassie is thrust into a life on the streets after yet another but most damaging, violent incident with her dad. After Cassie’s violin solo, he throws her precious cat, Calliope, across the kitchen and then turns his anger upon destroying her only vestige of solace; her Mangenot violin. She runs away and discovers the world out there alone is not what she thought it to be nor was her life at home all that bad. When Cassie goes home, she’s forced to deal with the abuse issues but is more ready to face them head on with her goddess by her side. Shattered offers a superb storyline, diminutive chapters, brilliantly mastered ethical dilemmas, marvelously plausible characters, yet the storyteller loses her hold on the reader with choppy sentences in her sometimes police-report style writing. Other times, her descriptive methodologies ostensibly place you right in the scene, right down to your most primitive senses. We’re in for another eminent writer when author Kathi Baron discovers how to blend her phenomenal imagination into a story that whisks you away using the written word to demonstrate her tale and all it has to offer.