Reign of Silence

by Tony Martin

When Joshua Nix came to pastor a church in the county seat town of St. Helena, Alabama, he could not have known his life and worldview would change forever.

After the mysterious death of her parents, Meredith Dubose, last descendent of an aristocratic Southern family, experiences - what? Psychological trauma? A true "haunting" in the family mansion? A demonic siege? As Joshua seeks to minister to Meredith, he finds himself obsessing over her and her plight - causing strain on his marriage and his church. Joshua soon learns the horrific truth of the supernatural events and a shattering truth about himself.

A frightening story told with an evocative Southern gothic flavor, Reign of Silence is ultimately a tale of redemption in the face of otherworldly terror.

Genres: Paranormal, Christian, Mystery Thriller

332 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2005

About the author

Tony Martin has been writing ever since he was a "little bitty guy." He is currently associate editor of The Baptist Record, the newsjournal of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, with a circulation of 70,000. He has written or co-written curriculum and devotional material for high school and junior high school students. A native Alabamian and self-confessed "son of the South," he first became intrigued by the theology of ghosts and hauntings in a class on the occult at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Reign of Silence draws from that early and latter research and from oral family traditions. He and his wife Teresa live in Brandon, Mississippi, and have two more-or-less grown children, Jeremy and Amy. When not working at his day job, Tony still works with teenagers, and enjoys performing magic, camping, travel, Civil War history, reading and writing, and has this inexplicable passion for any and all things Disney. Reign of Silence is his first novel.

Reviews

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

(i found it in the Kindle Store even though goodreads only has the paperback listing)

a gripping mystery-thriller. great characters (especially Pastor Joshua), vivid setting and some Civil War history mixed in with the main elements. also some good funny dialogue, which also makes the characters seem like real people.

i enjoyed this read very much.

my personal favorite funny bit:

(this is the only spoiler here and it's minor! scroll down if you want to see)

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
when the group is at the Dubose mansion overnight doing their ghost hunter work, and Precious (the ghost hunter/psychic...yes, his name is Precious, LOL) sets up for an electronic-voice-phenom (aka EVP) session, he asks the usual question: "Would anyone like to speak to us?"

Bethany (the pastor's wife) replies with "If anything answers, that front door is mine."

sounds like something i would say, LOL.

at any rate, a great read if you like spooky thrillers that are not full of gore.

[Marti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even considering that I'm near my goal of reading a hundred books this year, this one stands out as one of my favorite. On top of that, this was a free Amazon download. As if almost always the case with these free downloads, there were a few grammatical errors but I have still given this book a five-star rating because the book was just that good. I literally couldn't put it doan once I got started reading it. The setting is the small town of St. Helena, Alabama during the spring of 2005. Southern Baptist pastor Joshua Nix had just taken charge of a local church. As the book opens, Joshua has confided in his wife Bethany his belief in the supernatural and is preparing the coming Sunday morning's sermon on that theme. He cited an Old Testament account of King Saul making contact with Samuel through the use of a medium, referred to as the witch of Endor. Bethany was worried that such a message would ruffle an awful lot of feathers in this very conservative part of the country. Only a few hours after that sermon took place, the teenaged daughter of a family of his congregation told him about a very disturbing situation that has taken place at her best friend's antebellum mansion. This story has a fast paced plot, believable characters, and a strong Christian message. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

[Barb Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Reign of Silence is a wonderful read. With a pastor in the southern United States as the main character, it starts out with everyday life incidents and turns into a highly suspenseful, addictive tale. There were places in this story that were terrifying. The descriptions and storytelling was very well done.

[Liz Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sympathize with the pastor - sometimes in the modern world we forget the supernatural that occurred regularly in the Bible.

[Cynthia Maddox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book 4 stars but it would have gotten 5 had the author done a bit more in the formatting area. It is a great story and I did enjoy reading it but... his story structure (transition) are horrible. I would be reading along in one person's point of view and suddenly, in the next paragraph, I was in a different location, in a different person's point of view, talking about something totally different. Most of the time I had to stop and figure out what just happened. And it happened frequently.

Mr. Martin writes a great tale and it was doubly entertaining because I am from the area that St. Helena is supposed to be, and I mean smack dab in the middle of it. So it was fun to hear the names of nearby cities, the descriptions of the region, and the way people acted.

I found it also interesting to read a Christian author who can write a great ghost story and mystery. I was amused at the subject material because I know how Christians argue about the existence of ghost and what exactly they are. I also like that he used the scriptures to show how people could interpret this either way. That has never occurred to me before.

I don't read many Christian novels because they are generally sappy and boring. This one was not. The characters all had their failings and faults. They weren't unrealistically good or bad. They were very human, even the minister. Although, in the back of my mind I was thinking there wasn't enough praying going on in this bunch! So it was quite different. I'd like to read more by this author. If he can get his structure down a bit better.

Mr. Martin, you can fix the problems in a re-edit of this novel. I'd encourage you to do so. It is a great ghost story.

[Mariah Mund · Rating 4 out of 5]

what an interesting read, to see the spiritual realm so perfectly and eerily tied into faith. It was a page-turner that really made you think at the end about faith, trust, family, and sin. Thoroughly enjoyed. Only gave a 4-star because this is not my favorite genre of reading.

[Peter Younghusband · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good debut novel by Tony Martin. This is a different perspective on the bible verse of Exodus 20:5,
"You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me".

Usually this decree is manifested in the lives of those of the third and fourth generations but in this novel, it ends in the third or fourth generations. The beginning of this particular sin is beginning to manifest in the main character but he is kept in check by his wife and and an elder of the church. At first I wondered why the author included this subplot concerning the main character but as you progress towards the end, it all became clear and what a twist that was!! Very nicely done!!

This novel is different from another angle as well. In Something Stirs by Thomas Smith and Adverse Possession by Jess Hanna, the house is haunted by demons, and both these Christian authors portray demonic activity and its devastating effects on the occupants of the house very well and yes, very scary. In Reign of Silence, Martin has the haunting not by demons but by the spirits of the ancestors of Merediths family who are the subject of the Exodus 20:5 verse. It is through Meredith becoming a Christian and Joshua already a Christian and using the Word of God (and even the words of the hymn A Mighty Fortress by Martin Luther) that this curse from Exodus is broken and one of the ancestors is freed, the other not as he rejects the forgiveness of God while Meredith and Joshua are also freed as well.

I loved Martin's use of the biblical aspect of spiritual warfare here. It was used well and not preachy. It blended in well with the plot. It was good to see how this also encouraged the other main members to take their walk with God more seriously.

I have only one criticism. I found it a bit difficult having the Pastor and other Christian characters portrayed by the author as being very ignorant about what these manifestations in the house and what Meredith and Christine experienced then Joshua and the others encountered could be. The demonic or supernatural seemed to be the last conclusion they arrived at. I was expecting the author to portray them with a bit more savviness about this activity being supernatural and demonic until proved otherwise (in this case earth bound human spirits). However, I did enjoy the progression of these characters in how they came to the conclusion that this was supernatural and had to be dealt with God's way and using the Bible.

Another thing, Martin did well was portray the culture and attitudes of the southern life of America. There were instances where you knew you were in the American South by the language, the food, the description of the culture, even when this author described the history of Meredith family in the 1800s and 1900s. That added credibility to the story and characters.

I did chuckle at the usage of Y'all which is typical of the American South! I just cannot see us here in Australia saying that but then we say some equally unique words and terms!

The author also described the frustration of being a pastor well, the church politics and congregational expectations well. All this fitted in nicely to the plot. I wonder if Martin's real life experience shows here?

Martin tied up all the loose ends very well in the ending. It enabled me to leave this story with fond memories of the plot and characters. That is one sign of a talented writer.

This has become one of my favourite Christian horror novels.

I look forward to more of this author's work.

Highly recommended.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, Christian ghost story is right. Felt similar to something Peretti or Dekker would write (only with more ghosts I guess), so I wasn't surprised to see Peretti on the author's list of influential writers. It didn't really challenge my theological views like the summary claimed because, you know, fiction and all, but that certainly didn't affect my enjoyment of the book.

I believe this was one of my free kindle books (not sure, I've had it on there for a while now), and it was pretty good for a freebie. I love good Christian fiction, and I'm always up for a good ghost story, so I was intrigued to see how the two would mesh together. It worked out pretty well as it turned out. Unsurprisingly, a lot of it was attributed to demonic activity of some sort, but it was a lot more inclusive of proper ghosts than you'd typically expect to find in a Christian book.

It had a few of the random typos you'd expect in a kindle book (especially a free one!), and I'm not into the horror genre enough to know if it's overly cliched or not, but it definitely kept me glued to my kindle until the very end, and it handled the Christian element well (intertwined in the story without getting preachy or extraneous), so overall a great read.

All that said, I should probably warn that the past "perverse events" referenced in the book's summary are indeed pretty nasty. No explicit details or anything, but still definitely something to be aware of before heading into this book.

[Marti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even considering that I'm near my goal of reading a hundred books this year, this one stands out as one of my favorite. On top of that, this was a free Amazon download. As if almost always the case with these free downloads, there were a few grammatical errors but I have still given this book a five-star rating because the book was just that good. I literally couldn't put it doan once I got started reading it. The setting is the small town of St. Helena, Alabama during the spring of 2005. Southern Baptist pastor Joshua Nix had just taken charge of a local church. As the book opens, Joshua has confided in his wife Bethany his belief in the supernatural and is preparing the coming Sunday morning's sermon on that theme. He cited an Old Testament account of King Saul making contact with Samuel through the use of a medium, referred to as the witch of Endor. Bethany was worried that such a message would ruffle an awful lot of feathers in this very conservative part of the country. Only a few hours after that sermon took place, the teenaged daughter of a family of his congregation told him about a very disturbing situation that has taken place at her best friend's antebellum mansion. This story has a fast paced plot, believable characters, and a strong Christian message. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

[T.A. Munroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like when I come across Christian fiction that tackles controversial topics. Reign of Silence looks at the supernatural and poses the possibility that ghosts might exist. Tony Martin's tale set in the south is the story of Joshua, the pastor of a Baptist church, who becomes involved in helping a young woman rid her house of freaky phenomenon that takes his faith further that it had ever gone. He used scripture to make the hauntings seem plausible as they tied into a dark family secret.

I'm sure there are plenty of Christians who would decry such a story and it hasn't made me believe in ghosts anymore than I ever did, but it was a very interesting premise that reminded me there is a spiritual world we in the flesh know very little about.

If I was editor of the book, I might have suggested some Southern small town history be cut, that long expositions be altered somehow, repeated information be removed and some dialogue reworked to be made more natural. None of it was annoying enough to prompt me to abandon the story, which had some scary stuff in it. Scary for me in that I don't read supernatural/horror stories. Also scary that Satan is still at work in the world and he knows just how to use our weaknesses to make life difficult.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story, very well told and engaging. A young, small-town minister finds himself involved in what seems to be a haunted house mystery. The descriptions of the manifestations reminded me of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was described as a "Christian ghost story", which sums it up well. Enjoyable read, it was hard to put down. One of the very few books that has made me want to know about the author. Regretful that it is on my ereader and I cannot pass it around.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could give half star ratings, 4.5 stars!