This is an amazing story with a few true facts thrown in about the Klu Kluck Klan and the things that had happed in the 60 's, 70's and even 2017. Previous sections, but this is an ARC that I read, so I’m sure final print will be ironed out. It kept me engaged for the most part! All Content Copyright © 2010 - 2015, Rachel Neumeier unless otherwise specified. If you do chop it, just make sure it’s clear that we aren’t getting the whole thing in one go. It captivated me from the first sentence, and I kept trying to figure out what was going on with Beth and who the child was and how Imogene was connected. I appreciate what the author was trying to accomplish by tying in the very real issue of white supremacy both from the past to the present day, and the snippets of history sprinkled throughout were informative and chilling. Her babysitter is there and that babysitter does go to the door and opens it. My very longest is 194,000 words — but it was not that long when the editor gave it a thumb’s up. If I ever do that, I expect I will put Part I, Part II, Part III — and also bring all the parts out at once. Start by marking “Gone Too Long” as Want to Read: Error rating book. There's a chance you might delete the whole thing anyway. Today, however, Foreman's A World on Fire is just the biggest beast in a menagerie of fatties. To take a random sample from the current autumn season, Keith Jeffery's history of the secret service, MI6, is more than 800 pages. This trend is not confined to non-fiction. The novelist Ian McEwan has recently commented that modern novels are too long. It was for me a mystery and a thriller not knowing what was going to happen next. The power of a woman and what she will do to stand up for her family. That neglected genius, Robert Louis Stevenson, used to say: "The only art is to omit." I was more fascinated and invested in Beth's side of the story. If the novel is in the 50-60K-word range, (short for most markets outside teens) then you can either submit it as is, and keep your fingers crossed that this is a book that might be a rare exception, or you can figure out a way to add enough words to it to squeak into your target market’s low-end word count. Still have questions? Some public-spirited cultural patron – the Man Group, perhaps – should sponsor a prize for short books. My very longest is 194,000 words — but it was not that long when the editor gave it a thumb’s up. The cut-and-paste technology of word processors must bear some of the blame, but overwriting is part of the zeitgeist. A novel is too long at whatever point it gets boring. It hasn’t gone anywhere with trad publishers, so far. I was a little disappointed in the end. Against the bulging library of "damned thick, square books", here's my top 10 of slim volumes: 10. This, by the way, is not an original point of view. I LOVE Southern fiction and I had really high hopes for this one especially since it was marketed as a Southern gothic thriller.