The Song of David
Amy Harmon
ISBN-10: 1514185016

I won my first fight when I was eleven years old, and I’ve been throwing punches ever since. Fighting is the purest, truest, most elemental thing there is. Some people describe heaven as a sea of unending white. Where choirs sing and loved ones await. But for me, heaven was something else. It sounded like the bell at the beginning of a round, it tasted like adrenaline, it burned like sweat in my eyes and fire in my belly. It looked like the blur of screaming crowds and an opponent who wanted my blood.

For me, heaven was the octagon. Until I met Millie, and heaven became something different. I became something different. I knew I loved her when I watched her stand perfectly still in the middle of a crowded room, people swarming, buzzing, slipping around her, her straight dancer’s posture unyielding, her chin high, her hands loose at her sides. No one seemed to see her at all, except for the few who squeezed past her, tossing exasperated looks at her unsmiling face. When they realized she wasn’t normal, they hurried away. Why was it that no one saw her, yet she was the first thing I saw? If heaven was the octagon, then she was my angel at the center of it all, the girl with the power to take me down and lift me up again. The girl I wanted to fight for, the girl I wanted to claim. The girl who taught me that sometimes the biggest heroes go unsung and the most important battles are the ones we don’t think we can win.

This is David ‘Tag’ Taggert’s book, a supporting character introduced in The Law of Moses. This is a stand-alone story, but it is highly recommended that The Law of Moses be read first to avoid spoilers.

Review

Amy Harmon doesn’t tell conventional stories. There is no obvious climax or conflict that is cliche. What she does beautifully is weave stories that are unique. They are about the silent faces that sometimes get overlooked and often, go unheard. The Song of David echoes shades of Making Faces where the unlikely hero isn’t what you’d expect and the true champion of the story is the smallest, unpredictable soul.

The book centers around David “Tag” Taggert, a secondary character in Harmon’s previous release, The Law of Moses. It is both Tag and Moses who tell the story of how Tag fell in love with Millie, a blind, fiercely independent dancer who never lets her limitations stop her from seeing the brightest possibility in the world around her. Millie and Tag loved each other deeply and when Tag disappears and Moses sets out to discover what happened to him, the reader is treated to a unique narrative–the curious discovery of the young couple’s love seen both through Moses’ eyes and in the audio files Tag left for Millie.

This isn’t simply a love story. Told with vivid, poetic language, Harmon excels at painting a picture of a couple in the throes of new love and the desperate attempts they face to overcome the hurdles laid before them meant to derail any hope of that love growing.

“If heaven was the octagon, then she was my angel at the center of it all, the girl with the power to take me down and lift me up again. The girl I wanted to fight for, the girl I wanted to claim. The girl who taught me that sometimes the biggest heroes go unsung and the most important battles are the ones we don’t think we can win.”

Yet again, Harmon has set the bar sky high for writers who desire to pen stories that are honest, brutal and a perfect reflection of how life can destroy, abandon and the impossible hope that love is never forgotten.

High, highly recommended.

We are giving away TWO e-book copies of The Song of David to those of you who comment below.

Good luck!