Monarchs and Mendicants
A JOURNEY FROM DESPAIR TO HOPE
When a fourth homeless man is murdered by the Hacker, Gifford Ulrich leaves downtown St. Louis carrying his belongings on his back and wanders into the Benoit Neighborhood searching for shelter and safety. He finds abandoned buildings and abandoned people; drunks, drug addicts, gamblers; the outcasts; the unusual, the unbalanced, and the unlucky. His job cleaning bricks leads him to discover hidden forces at work in Benoit that throw him in the middle of danger and death. To fight his way off the streets, Giff must rely on his military training, his knife, and an anger born of loss. The only way to survive the passage from tragedy to triumph is to kill or be killed.
BOOK 1 IN THE GIFFORD ULRICH SERIES
THE JOURNEY BEGINS:
Gifford Ulrich didn’t know the distance from despair to hope, but he knew hope didn’t sleep in alleys. On this morning his first waking moments were filled with the audible lamenting breath of having survived another winter night on the streets of St. Louis, those onerous recurring sighs that had become his respiration. Endurance was not an uplifting miracle to him, but a depressing fact. Not the surprise, “Hallelujah, I’m alive,” but the admission, “Oh, I’m still here.”
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***MY HONEST REVIEW OF MONARCHS AND***
The homeless living on the streets of St. Louis are being
picked off by a serial killer. After his only friend becomes a victim, Gifford
adopts his dog Tobias and moves on to another area further on. He takes a job
that pays enough to survive on, but being surrounded by other homeless it
becomes a constant struggle to stay the loner he had become. Before he knows
it, he has been drawn into the brotherhood of his fellow miscreants and becomes
a leader he never wanted to be.
Gifford was pretty rough around the edges, but like the rest
of the characters in this book, I was drawn to him and his strength. I kept
hoping that he would soften to all the kindness and friendship he was offered.
I like that this story had mystery, suspense, drama, and even a little history,
all rolled into a plot that had you wondering how the story would end for
Gifford. And all of his surrounding characters had equal depth, so that you
either liked or hated them. Nothing in between. Even though this story had an
ending, I’m so glad that Gifford’s story continues.
My review can also be found at:
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**The above
opinions are 100% my own, whether I purchased the book or it was given to me to
review.
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