No River Too Wide

No River Too Wide

By Emilie Richards

Publisher: Harlequin MIRA

Release Date: June 24, 2014

Janine Stoddard has spent twenty-five years as the wife of an abusive husband, but there is still enough spirit left in her to seize the opportunity to escape when she is offered help by Moving On, an underground highway for abused women. One night when her husband is away, she puts her carefully conceived plan into effect, leaving her luxurious Topeka, Kansas, prison in flames. Janine has refused contact with her daughter because she feared her husband would somehow discover Harmony’s location, but she longs to see her daughter and the nine-month-old granddaughter she has never met before she settles somewhere to begin a new life. Thus, she heads for Asheville, North Carolina, for what she plans to be a brief stop before moving on to New Hampshire where she hopes to be safe.

Harmony has checked the Topeka Capiatal-Journal every few weeks since her mother told her never to call home again more than a year ago, expecting to see a headline reporting her mother’s death. She’s heartbroken but not surprised when she thinks her mother has perished in the fire, but surprised is an understatement of her feelings when her mother shows up on the farm outside Asheville where Harmony works as a Jill-of-all-trades and lives in a garage apartment. Harmony’s friend Taylor Martin sees offering Jan a home as a way of repaying Harmony for all that Harmony did for Taylor’s mother. With Taylor living twenty miles away on the other side of Asheville, Jan will be away from Harmony but close enough for the Jan to see her daughter and granddaughter occasionally. When Taylor tells Jan that her being with Taylor’s eleven-year-old daughter when Taylor has to be away on school nights will be a help, Jan agrees to stay.

Richards deftly weaves together the stories of these three women and adds the mystery of Rex’s Stoddard’s disappearance to complicate things. Despite the insurance fraud thread and a romance between the cautious Taylor and Adam Pryor, a new man in town with secrets of his own, No River Too Wide is a story about growth and forgiveness, including self-forgiveness, which may be more difficult than forgiving others.

Emilie Richards is one of the writers whose books I began reading in the 1980s and have followed her from category fiction to single-title contemporary romance to mystery to women’s fiction and enjoyed each phase of the journey. No River Too Wide, the third book in her Goddesses Anonymous series, has the emotionally rich contexts and layered characters that have kept me reading this author for nearly three decades. Whether she is writing about troubled marriages, complex family dynamics, the tendrils of the past that cling to human lives, or any one of a dozen or more social issues that touch the lives of her characters--and her readers--Emilie Richards is one of the best writers in popular fiction.

Books about battered women have become common in recent years, but few show as full a portrait of a woman abused over decades as Richards offers in this book. Alternately heart-rending and inspiring, No River Too Wide reveals a woman almost destroyed by physical and psychological abuse who has the courage to accept help, one who gradually forgives herself, regains her self-respect, and acquires a new appreciation of the freedom to make choices and to grow into an independent woman.

“It didn’t matter if she was frightened by everyday things that others took for granted. It didn’t matter if she felt alone in the world, something Rex had repeatedly warned her would happen if she ever tried to leave him. It didn’t matter that she no longer knew what a woman like her could actually achieve. Perhaps it didn’t even matter that she had failed at the things she had most hoped to accomplish and was still seeking forgiveness. . . .”

Although Harmony was a lesser target of her father’s abuse than was her mother and, with her mother’s help, she escaped as soon as she graduated from high school, she bears her own scars. She loves her mother, but she also blames her for not leaving sooner. She is also suspicious of lives that seem too perfect from the outside, having experienced the horror that could be concealed behind the happy family image.

Taylor learned some painful lessons through her estrangement and reconciliation with her mother (One Mountain Away). She explains to her daughter Maddie:

“Here’s what you need to learn from everything that happened with Mom and me. We loved each other but we let our differences get in the way. I held a grudge for years, almost to the end of her life, and I was wrong to do that. Very wrong.”

But Taylor’s learning is incomplete; she still finds it difficult to forgive when people fall short of her expectations.

One of the joys of reading this book is seeing the growth that takes place in many characters from the three women who are primary to baby Lottie’s father. For readers who like a romance line even in their women’s fiction, there is Taylor’s relationship with Adam, a man who wants to do the right thing but finds it difficult to reconcile his professional responsibilities with the dictates of his conscience. I also liked Harmony’s reentry to the world of dating and her admission that Mr. Perfect may also be Mr. Not Right for me.

I’m sure it is clear by now that I loved No River Too Wide. It’s another Richards keeper for me, and I highly recommend it. I do feel I should add one caveat: this book can be read as a standalone, but readers who have not read One Mountain Away may feel as if Harmony and Taylor’s stories are incomplete. Reading the two books makes for a richer, more meaningful reading experience. The second book, Somewhere Between Luck and Trust, is also excellent, but it is more loosely connected.


Do you have a keeper shelf? What’s your most recent addition to it?

The Twelve Days of Christmas in September: Day Ten--The Christmas Wedding Quilt

The Christmas Wedding Quilt

By Emilie Richards, Janice Kay Johnson, and Sarah Mayberry

Publisher: Harlequin 

(Special Releases)

Release Date: 

November 6, 2013

The Premise

Once upon a time there were four little girls, cousins as close as sisters, who spent their summers at Hollymeade, the family vacation cottage on a lake shore in western New York. They spent their summers playing, eating ice cream, wearing lookalike dresses their grandmother had made them, and learning to quilt. Then their lives changed, some of their parents died, their idyllic summers ended, and they grew apart. As adults, they are little more than strangers, living in different places and rarely communicating. Then one day not long before Christmas, one of the little girls, now grown up, returns from Hong Kong to find a package from her aunt, a much loved figure from her childhood, who has recently died. Enclosed is a quilt square, a beautifully detailed rendering of Hollymeade in fabric and thread, complete with Christmas decorations, a snow bride and groom in the yard, and a silver star in the sky. The accompanying note explains that the aunt has made the quilt square as the centerpiece of a quilt for her daughter, one of the four cousins, but the aunt knows that she will not live to complete the quilt. She is asking her daughter’s three cousins to complete the quilt, round robin fashion, and gather for their cousin’s wedding next Christmas when the four of them together can put the finishing touches on the quilt.

The First Quilt Border: “Let It Snow” by Emilie Richards

Jo Miller is not sure when she gave up her life and became consumed with her work as a systems analyst for a San Diego-based consulting firm, but the request from her Aunt Gloria pushed her into using some of her vast accumulation of vacation time to return for the first time in many years to Hollymeade. She arranges to gather some fabrics from the groom’s baby clothes to add to pieces from the bride’s past while she’s there. Her plans are to spend Christmas alone at Hollymeade, working on her part of the quilt and contemplating her life. She doesn’t expect to get caught in a snow storm, unable to find the key to Hollymeade, and she doesn’t expect her rescuer to be the man who broke her teenage heart.

Brody Ryan, vintner and sometime jack-of-all-trades, has never forgotten Jo. He’s always wondered how different their lives would have been if his family situation hadn’t made it necessary for him to jilt her. He never thought Jo would come back, but now that she has, Brody plans to see that she stays long enough to see if they can recapture their old friendship—and maybe something more.

Seeing one another again definitely stirs the embers of an old flame, but can these two intensely private people, cautious and wary as they have become, learn to trust one another with all their secrets and risk loving once more?

The Second Quilt Border: “You Better Watch Out” by Janice Kay Johnson

Potter Ella Torrence thinks the Christmas quilt may be a way to reestablish a connection to her mother’s family, a connection that her guilt led her to sever years ago. She has finished her part and is ready to mail it to her cousin in Australia with high hopes for a reunion with her cousins. When she stops to leave some new pieces to a Seattle gallery, her car is stolen with the cherished quilt inside. Ella is angry and devastated and determined to chase down the thief—on foot, if necessary.

Defense attorney Brett Hollister was once on the fast track to success, but lately he’s become a loser. He lost his girlfriend, he’s lost too many cases, and he’s lost his enthusiasm for defending people he knows are guilty of all charges. When Ella plows into him, he offers his Corvette to pursue the thief. The thief evades them, but finding him and rescuing the quilt become as important to Brett, who needs to win at something, as it is to Ella.

As they work together to find the thief, they fall in love. But both Brett and Ella have baggage that makes commitment difficult. They have to let go of pasts that they have misinterpreted before they can seize a future that promises the happily ever after neither of them expects.

The Third Quilt Border: “Nine Ladies Dancing” by Sarah Mayberry

Librarian and ballroom dancer Rachel Macintosh is awed by the skill that has gone into creating the quilt she received from her cousin Ella. Intimidated by her task when she hasn’t done any needlecraft in years, she seeks the help of quilter Gabby Bennett. One day when she and Gabby are having lunch in Gabby’s home and discussing the quilt, they are joined by Gabby’s son. Rachel is dismayed to learn that Gabby’s rude and sharp-tongued son is none other than the arrogant jerk whose careless, cruel comment once destroyed the fragile self-esteem of a young Rachel when she was an awkward American feeling out of place in her new Australian school.

Leo Bennett is a firefighter wounded physically and emotionally in a fire that left his best friend dead. On medical leave, he is staying with his mother since his broken wrist makes to difficult for him to manage on his own. He loves his mother, but her hovering pushes him over the edge sometimes, especially when survivor’s guilt threatens to overwhelm him. He knows he owes his mother an apology, and he owes Rachel one too, although he can’t understand why a woman he can’t remember loathes him.

Rachel acknowledges that an adult Leo is even more physically appealing than the hot, popular jock that was the teenage Leo, but she’s not convinced that tigers change their stripes, no matter how charmingly he apologizes once she’s told him about that long ago incident. Leo really is a different person, and the evidence of his arrogant younger self makes him cringe. He is attracted to Rachel, but he knows she will be slow to trust him. In fact, it’s not until Rachel sees the vulnerable, hurting man that Leo hides so well that Rachel admits how much she has come to care for him.

The Epilogue: The Fourth Cousin

The quilt is at Hollymeade for the wedding, and readers witness the reunion of Olivia Miller and her returning vet hero, Eric Grant.

I’ve said before that I am a fan of anthologies, but I typically read them because one or two of the authors is a favorite. The Christmas Wedding Quilt is that rare collection with all the stories by autobuy authors. Also, this is really more collaboration than anthology since the stories are so carefully woven together. While none of the three had me revising my choice of the author’s best work, all are sweet, satisfying tales, and the premise is sentimental with a bittersweet touch.

I liked all the characters, and I liked that the stories were linked thematically as well as by the premise. All the characters are dealing with problems rooted in their pasts, and the quilt itself is linked to the shared pasts of the four cousins, to Hollymeade, and to the woman who created the quilt’s center and who loved all four girls “like daughters.” I also loved that all three heroes did something extraordinary for their heroines. I admit though that my favorite moment was when Brett returned to Ella with the quilt in hand.

I’m not a quilter, but both my grandmothers were, and I have wonderful memories of them, particularly of my maternal grandmother, a gifted needlewoman and storyteller. One of my grab-in-case-of-fire objects is a quilt a group of dear friends made for me as a retirement gift. So I loved the Christmas quilt, and I thought it was a particular delight that so many visual details of it were included.

The only thing I didn’t like was that the epilogue was too short. Readers are told that there is a wedding, a celebration, and a reunion, but I wanted to see those things. I wanted to see not just the bride and groom together but also see the cousins and Olivia with the quilt. I want a sequel. Nevertheless, The Christmas Wedding Quilt is sweet with the perfect touch of sentiment, a lovely Christmas read. I recommend it.

Are you a quilter? Do you have favorite quilting stories in fiction or in your autobiography?

Tuesday Review: Somewhere Between Luck and Trust

Somewhere Between Luck and Trust

By Emilie Richards

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: June 25, 2013

Twenty-two-year-old Cristy Haviland is about to be released from The North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where she has just served eight months on a contrived shoplifting charge. Her future looks anything but promising. She is struggling with making the right decision about the son to whom she gave birth during her imprisonment. Michael, the son whom she has never held, is being loved and cared for by a cousin of Cristy’s.  She is afraid to go back to Berle, her hometown, because her son’s father is there. Cristy is grateful but wary that Samantha Ferguson, the director of a maternal-health clinic in Ashville, has taken an interest in her and is offering her a place to stay at Goddess House, a log cabin located between two small mountain towns, Luck and Trust.

Ironically, luck and trust are two qualities in short supply in Cristy’s life. There’s little in her past to foster a belief in either quality even before the prison sentence. The daughter of a legalistic preacher and his ineffectual wife who set standards their daughter could never meet and withheld their love and approval when she failed, Christy was ripe pickings for Jackson Ford, the spoiled and superficial charmer who won her with his attention and used her for his own twisted purpose.

While Christy is adjusting to her freedom, discovering who she is, and finding answers to the questions she has about her new life, one of the directors of Goddess House is searching for answers about her distant past. Georgia Ferguson, Samantha’s mother, is an innovative educator currently employed as the principal of an alternative school. Georgia is the once famous “Sweatshirt Baby,” so tagged by the media because as a new born she was found wrapped in a University of Georgia sweatshirt and abandoned in a hospital sink, a preemie who almost didn’t survive. Now newspaper clippings about her birth and a charm bracelet have mysteriously appeared on her desk. Their appearance just as she is approaching her fiftieth birthday leave Georgia wondering about the mother who abandoned her even as she deals with the challenges of her troubled students.

As different as the two women are in most ways, a connection develops. Georgia, who has extensive training in the teaching of reading, recognizes that Cristy is illiterate. Given the young woman’s obvious intelligence and social skills, Georgia determines that the problem is a form of dyslexia and offers to teach Cristy to read. Afraid of just one more failure, Cristy is at first reluctant but eventually accepts Georgia’s offer. As they work together, their respect for one another deepens and a friendship develops. When Georgia decides to unlock the mystery of her past, Cristy is one of the friends with her every step of her journey.

Emilie Richards packs this second book in her Goddesses Anonymous series with elements drawn from a variety of genres and a bundle of social issues. Somewhere Between Luck and Trust is most clearly women’s fiction, but both the mystery and romance threads are strong. In addition to the mystery of Georgia’s beginnings, there is the mystery of the setup that sent Cristy to prison. Both mysteries are solved but not without some twists along the way. Romance is provided for both women as well. Jim “Sully” Sullivan, a young cop from Berle who has a strong sense of justice and high courage, becomes Cristy’s champion and earns his place in her heart. Lucas Ramsey, a mystery writer with a soft spot for a troubled teen, sneaks past Georgia’s reservations about romantic relationships with his genuine charm and caring.

The social issues woven into the story include rehabilitation, adoption, child abandonment, literacy, education, acceptance of homosexuality, the evolving definition of family, and I may have missed one or more. The result of so many issues could easily have been a confusing, tangled mess of threads or a sociological treatise, but in the deft hands of Richards, it is neither. She is a gifted storyteller, and she weaves this complicated mix into a compelling, coherent, variegated whole that captures the reader’s interest, touches her heart, and challenges her preconceptions. And she does all this while making the North Carolina setting so real you can feel the sun’s heat and touch the earth of Cristy’s garden.

Readers of One Mountain Away will enjoy learning more about Georgia and seeing Samantha and other characters from the first book make appearances and appreciate seeing Charlotte’s legacy come alive, but Somewhere Between Luck and Trust can also be read as a standalone. If you appreciate novels, regardless of marketing tags, that ate cogent, compassionate, and courageous, I highly recommend this one.

I sometimes think we pay too much attention to putting books into simple categories. While I will always love undiluted romance, I also find that some of my favorite books defy simple labels. How do you feel about books our need to separate books by genre or subgenre?

Tuesday Review: One Mountain Away

One Mountain Away

By Emilie Richards
Publisher: Harlequin Mira
Release Date: July 31, 2012

Charlotte Hale has position and power and great wealth, things she has spent her life working to acquire not just for themselves but because they made her feel in control. In the process of acquiring these things, she has also lost much. She is divorced, she has been estranged from her only child for ten years, and she has a ten-year-old granddaughter with whom she’s never spoken. She is a force within her real estate development company and within the city she has called home for all of her adult life, Ashville, North Carolina. Sometimes she is a force for good but always she can see only one point of view—her own. She is admired and respected, but she is essentially alone, a state she realizes when, confronted with her own mortality, she begins to examine her life. She determines that in whatever time remains to her she will atone for the mistakes she has made.

As Charlotte begins her journey on this new path, her life intersects with the lives of others, most of whom she has wounded directly or indirectly. First, there is Analiese Wagner, pastor of the Church of the Covenant, where Charlotte is a member. Charlotte didn’t feel that Analiese was the right choice to pastor the church and voted against her. The two disagree about many things, but as Charlotte shares some of the truths of her life with Ana, she grows to depend upon her honesty and compassion. And Ana comes to value Charlotte.

Harmony Stoddard, with sun-bleached hair, freckles, and a gold ring in her nose, may look like an All-American girl with an edge, but she is a young woman with burdens almost too heavy for her slender shoulders. She is a waitress at Cuppa, the coffee shop that Charlotte frequents. When Charlotte finds Harmony sleeping in her car, she offers the young woman first a place for a night and later a home. Charlotte, a mother estranged from her daughter, and Harmony, a daughter whose mother is too beaten down to be there for her child, fill empty spaces in one another’s lives.

Georgia Ferguson was once headmistress of Covenant Academy, the school Charlotte’s daughter attended. Charlotte used her influence to see Georgia fired after her daughter Samantha is involved in a drunk-driving accident. Samantha, now a nurse and the mother of a young daughter, is also the best friend of Charlotte’s daughter. All of these lives are interwoven with Charlotte’s and with one another, offering Charlotte ways to make amends, ways to make a difference, and ways to make memories of a woman warmer and more giving than the Charlotte Hale she was.

The most significant relationships are those with Charlotte’s family. Her former husband Ethan, who has spent a decade trying not to think of Charlotte, sees her at the park where their granddaughter Maddie is playing. He wonders what she’s doing, he questions whether he should tell his daughter about Charlotte’s appearance, and he remembers the Charlotte he first met, the one with whom he fell in love, the one he’s never been able to forget.

Taylor Martin teaches yoga and Pilates. Her salary and the child support Maddie’s father pays make it possible to support herself and her daughter. She has a degree in health and wellness promotion, but the kind of job she wants can’t be found in Ashville. She depends upon her father not only for additional financial support but also for emotional support. She needs him, and she believes Maddie, an epileptic, needs to be surrounded by people who love her—her grandfather Ethan, her father’s parents, Samantha and her daughter Edna, who is Maddie’s friend. Taylor can’t bring herself to leave Ashville. She can’t bring herself to let go of the anger she feels toward her mother either. A relationship that was made difficult by what Taylor saw as her mother’s unrelenting need to control her was shattered by a remark that Taylor cannot forget and will not forgive.   

Charlotte can only hope that these relationships can be mended in some way. She is afraid to act for fear of doing the wrong thing. When Ethan makes an effort, she can meet him halfway gratefully. But she is uncertain that she will ever talk with Taylor again or get to know Maddie. Time might heal all wounds, but time is one gift that Charlotte has only in limited measure.

I’ve been reading Emilie Richards books since she was writing category romances back in the 1980s and 90s. When she moved to single titles, I followed, and I followed again when she began writing women’s fiction and mysteries. I’ve read most of the seventy books she’s written, from Sweet Georgia Gal (1985) through the Happiness Key books (2009-2011). I always include The Trouble with Joe (1994) and Prospect Street (2002) on my all-time favorite one hundred list, and my love for her Shenandoah Album books inspired my heroine’s profession in my first manuscript. So when I say, no Emilie Richards book has moved me so powerfully as did One Mountain Away, I speak from the perspective of a long history with this author.

This is the first book in a new series, Goddesses Anonymous, It sets up the series beautifully with a rich and varied cast of characters that win the reader’s heart and capture her imagination. But it is not merely a setup of the controlling premise; it is foremost the poignant, tender story of Charlotte Hale, a woman who reclaims her life and makes it one worth having lived. I found the novel engaging from the first page, but these words at the end of the first chapter had me heart, mind, and spirit.

I’m struck by how many possibilities confront us each moment of our lives, possibilities we rarely notice. We move on to the next decision by habit, then the next, and we never look around to see all the paths leading to other places, other lives. . . .

As always there are too many choices to contemplate fully, but as I stand and turn in the other direction, I know I’m making the only one I can.

I highly recommend this book, but I do so with one caveat. One Mountain Away is women’s fiction. It includes a wonderful love story with a hero who is easy to love, but the focus is Charlotte’s journey. The ending, although uplifting and life-affirming, is not the conventional HEA. I was relieved that I had a box of tissues handy. But if you can move beyond the expectation of the sacrosanct HEA, you will find a book to cherish, one with characters who will linger in your mind after you’ve turned the final page, one that may even inspire you to look at your own life with eyes that see more truly.

Have you ever read a book that totally captivated you with one moment or one paragraph? How do you feel about books that may require the judicious use of a hanky or tissues to wipe away the tears?

Ten Under-read Romance Novels: Part II

Just to refresh your memory, these five books, like those I blogged about last week, are novels that get less attention than others by the author or are the work of an author who gets less attention than her books merit. They offer the reader so much that I find it difficult to understand why more people don’t read these books and rave about them.

The Quiet Gentleman, Georgette Heyer (HQN, 2009--not edition shown above)

This tale of Gervase Frant, Earl St. Erth, and his return to Stanyon Castle and the relatives who had counted on his not surviving the war rarely shows up on lists of favorite Heyer novels. It’s certainly different from other Heyer romances. St. Erth is a far remove from arrogant, aristocratic heroes, and Drusilla Morville, a practical young woman with no claim to beauty and the disadvantage of a novel-writing mother who is a follower of Wollstonecraft and a democratic father who is a crony of Southey and Coleridge. The confident aristocrat and the innocent beauty do appear in the novel, but they are relegated to secondary roles. But readers who venture beyond the usual Heyer favorites will find in this novel some of the author’s most trenchant observation of Regency society and a heroine whose conversation is a delight. See the example below.

"Why, yes! It aches like the very deuce, but not, I assure you, as much as does my self-esteem! How came I to fall, like the rawest of greenhorns?" He received no answer to this, and added, with an effort at playfulness: "But I forget my manners! I must thank you for preserving my life, Miss Morville - even though it may have been at the cost of my cravat!"


"I am not, in general," said Miss Morville carefully, "an advocate for the employment of hyperbole in describing trifling services, but I believe, my lord, that in this instance I may be justly said to have done so."

Reforming Lord Ragsdale, Carla Kelly (Signet, 1995)

Carla Kelly is an under-read writer. I don’t understand why every book she writes isn’t on the best seller lists. Her most recent books, a Harlequin Historicals trilogy (Marrying the Captain, The Surgeon’s Lady, and Marrying the Royal Marine) joined the more than a dozen Kelly keepers already on my book shelves. Most of her novellas are there as well. But Reforming Lord Ragsdale is my favorite Kelly novel. First it pairs a self-destructive English aristocrat with an Irish indentured servant. Both characters are grieving losses they cannot speak of, but one of the book’s strengths is its wit and humor. Another strength is the friendship that develops between this unlikely pair as they save one another and as the hero grows to be the man he was meant to become. The first time I read the book I knew it was a romance and that the HEA was a given, but even knowing this, I couldn’t see how Kelly was going to allow the lord and the servant to remain together without pulling off some most un-Kelly trick. She doesn’t. They do. I love it!

Prospect Street, Emilie Richards (Mira, 2002)

Emilie Richards is one of those writers that I have followed through several genres and enjoyed every part of the journey. I started reading her books when she was writing categories, and her Men of Midnight trilogy and The Trouble with Joe are still among my keepers. I’ve read all her single-titles from Iron Lace (1996) through Fortunate Harbor (2010), including her Shenandoah Album books and her Ministry is Murder mysteries. But Prospect Street is the one I return to again and again. Faith Bronson leads a privileged life as the daughter of a Senator, the wife of a conservative lobbyist, and the mother of a son and a daughter. One evening she sets out to surprise her husband at their cabin and finds him in the arms of his male lover, a journalist. Her private discovery is followed by a media frenzy that insures her husband loses his job with Promise the Children, the organization he works for. Not only is Faith’s marriage disintegrating, but suddenly money is also a major concern. She finds sanctuary in a house on Prospect Street, a fixer-upper that has been in her mother’s family for generations. Prospect Street is the story of Faith’s journey to redefine herself and her relationships with her parents, her former husband, her children, the new man in her life, and the house on Prospect Street and the secrets it holds. Richards doesn’t vilify David Bronson, and she doesn’t turn Faith Bronson into a saint. He is the product of a conservative Christian upbringing and has spent his life denying his sexual preference. She is filled with anger and resentment over the shambles of her life. Their children are confused and troubled; the daughter Remy particularly is transformed by the destruction of the life she has known, changing from good girl to bitter, rebellious teen who refuses to see her father and constantly challenges her mother. Richards does not use her novel to sell a political or religious (or anti-religious) message. She presents complex characters with messy lives who struggle to forgive and to grow. The ending may be a bit too easy for all this complexity, but the book is a fascinating, human story.

In the Midnight Rain, Ruth Wind (HarperTorch 2000)

Whether she’s writing as Barbara Samuel, Barbara O’Neal, or Ruth Wind, this writer creates stories that engage me intellectually and emotionally. She also has a gift for creating places so detailed and richly textured that I finish her books feeling as if I’ve smelled the flowers and felt the breezes that ruffle the trees. Pine Bend, Texas, the setting of In the Midnight Rain is a place I know by heart after half a dozen readings of this book since its publication in 2000. Ellie Connor, the heroine, is a writer whose specialty is biographies of musicians. She comes to Pine Bend to research her next subject, Mabel Beauvais, a gorgeous and talented blues singer who mysteriously disappeared just as she was on the cusp of stardom. Ellie is also searching for her father; the only thing she knows about him is that a post card from her mother links him to this East Texas town. Via the Internet, Ellie becomes friendly with Dr. Laurence “Blue” Reynard, a handsome, wealthy widower, who offers Ellie and April, her dog, a place to stay while she is in Pine Bend. Blue is a needy soul whose love of music is as deep as Ellie’s, and despite his reputation as a heartbreaker, Ellie finds him irresistible. Ellie and Blue’s love story is interwoven with the double mystery and connected to the lives of a large and fascinating cast of secondary characters—black and white. These characters, major and minor, are flawed adults who inhabit a place entangled in history, personal and public. Racism is part of the world Wind shows readers, but so are the solid friendships that exist across racial lines. This is a novel as filled with difficult truths and emotional power as the blues beloved by the characters. And, unlike some of the under-read books I’ve blogged about that are hard to find, In the Midnight Rain is now available as an ebook.

Venus in Blue Jeans, Meg Benjamin (Samhain, 2009)

This novel, coincidentally another Texas book, is different from the other books in this two-part blog. I’ve only read it twice, and those readings were both recent. I might have missed it if not for my friends and former Romance Vagabond companions, Lindsey (Managing Editor for Samhain), who sent me a copy, and Manda, whose rave first alerted me to the book. I immediately fell in love with Konigsburg, a small town that is not idyllic but rather filled with the kind of characters a reader can believe in. Docia Kent, bookstore owner, and Cal Toleffson, veterinarian, are relative newcomers to the town and still learning its quirks and customs. Their status offer a point of view that is different from the more common small-town heroine/hero who is either championing the hometown or in conflict with it. Another thing that set VIBJ apart from many contemporary romances is that while the attraction between Docia and Cal is instantaneous, a relationship develops between them before they fall into bed. The reader has time to find the characters likeable and to find their liking for one another as credible as their lust for one another. Their story is funny and sweet and sexy—a combination I favor, and the secondary characters are individual and interesting. Not many authors enter my autobuy list on the strength of one book. Meg Benjamin did. And Venus in Blue Jeans is just the first book in a four-book series that also includes Wedding Bell Blues, Be My Baby, and Long Time Gone.


What under-read books do you recommend I try? Do you have an autobuy list? What makes an author an autobuy for you?