The Blessed and the Damned

Written by Michael Wallace

Narrated by Arielle DeLisle

As the son of the prophet of Blister Creek, a polygamous enclave in Utah, Dr. Jacob Christianson has struggled for years to reconcile his faith with his skepticism about the fundamentalist practices of his community. Nevertheless, when his family and neighbors were threatened, Jacob stepped up time and again to lead the fight against those who would destroy them. Now Jacob and the residents of Blister Creek face a dangerous new challenge to their quiet existence. Taylor Kimball Jr. wants to take over as prophet of Blister Creek—and he wants Jacob’s sister Eliza by his side when he does it. With no room for personal reservations, Jacob forms a tenuous alliance with his father and the FBI. But Taylor Junior is as crafty as he is brutal, anticipating Jacob’s plan and drawing him out to leave Blister Creek vulnerable to attack. And this time Taylor has come prepared, with a horrific new weapon capable of annihilating Blister Creek. If he has any chance of winning this fight, Jacob will have to decide, once and for all, just how far he is willing to go to protect his community. The fourth in Michael Wallace’s riveting Righteous series, The Blessed and the Damned raises the stakes in Jacob’s world to dizzying new heights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Oct 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781455881383

Michael Wallace

MICHAEL WALLACE is a senior consultant with Cardinal Solutions Group, an IT strategy, Agile coaching, and disaster recovery consultancy.

Reviews for The Blessed and the Damned

[donnacallea · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was totally captivated by the first novel in Michael Wallace's Righteous series, and have eagerly looked forward to the sequels. I received The Blessed and the Damned as an advance reader copy, and, after a somewhat slow start, found it hard to put down. Wallace is a fine writer and his subject is a fascinating one. His central characters are intelligent, compassionate, conflicted men and women who find themselves immeshed-- either by birth or choice or both-- in a polygamist Mormon sect in modern-day Utah, far from mainstream Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, their ruggedly-drawn world is also populated by more than its share of homicidal, crazed, power-hungry fanatics who do truly terrible things in the name of religion. I can imagine The Righteous as an action-packed, thought-proviking blockbuster movie, followed by a string of successful sequels. But I highly recommend starting from the beginning.