Crowfoot Ridge - Hardcover

Brandt, Ann

3.51

51 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060192151 ISBN 13: 9780060192150

Publisher: Harper, 1999

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Avery Baldwin is going back to California.

This time the trip isn't just in her mind, as it has often been in the twenty years of marriage, memories, and heartache sine those bittersweet summers of her teenage years. Avery is finally ready to return to the mountains where she first knew love, friendship, violence, and shame, and where she may find the truth--however painful--among the shattered fragments of her past.

Every summer Avery's family went to stay at a farm tucked at the base of a small mountain range called Crowfoot Ridge. Never quite connecting with her older brother, Adam, Avery instead grew close to the son and daughter of the Marshalls, the nearest neighbors, unaware that the fateful events of those summers would shape the rest of her life and haunt her hopes of happiness.

Now a married, childless real estate broker in a Florida suburb, Avery constantly battles the stirring images of her youth. She and her husband live like strangers. He's a developer, willing to sacrifice the endangered wetlands for a hefty profit, while Avery spends too much of her time alone.

Suddenly Avery can no longer deny her need to escape. Back at Crowfoot Rise she'll have the chance to see her childhood friend, Sylvia Marshall, and the first love of her life, Sylvia's older brother, Mars. She will also have to confront the tragic, brutal act that ended their days of innocence and threatened to destroy those precious bonds forever.

Avery may not find what she hopes or expects, but she'll soon discover that the magic of Crowfoot Ridge is far from over.

Avery drove by the shop after dinner. His shop, a converted depot. The sign said MARS MARSHALL, WOODWRIGHT. Her hand trembled on the steering wheel. Her breath caught in her throat. Twenty-one years since she'd seen him. She'd spent all those years looking for life, while Mars had gone on and lived it. Avery wanted to stop, but couldn't. She would sleep. Prepare herself. Avery fought for a balance between caution and harebrained recklessness. She would see Mars tomorrow.

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About the Author:

Ann Brandt lives in the mountains of western North California. This is her first novel.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Everything is pitched just a mite too high in this first novel that was originally self-published: an Oprahratic weeper about a Florida woman's recovery from her life of ill-gotten wealth and comfort. Avery Baldwin is a successful realtor whose relationship with her Babbitish developer husband Ken Kessler hits the skids when Avery realizes how blithely Kessler Properties is trashing Florida's wetlands and wildlife habitatsand when memories of her childhood North Carolina vacations (in the hamlet of the title) tug her back to her old sweetheart Mars Marshall, who ``released'' Avery from loving him 30 years ago after his loutish father had sexually assaulted her and been slain, ostensibly by her best friend (Mars's daughter) Sylva, in what was then declared self-defense. This is the kind of novel in which a close friend comforts Avery as follows: ``The separation may have caused your relationship with Mars to escalate out of proportion, especially in the eyes of naive teenagers and considering the intensity of first-love.'' Well, okay. Undaunted, Avery returns to Crowfoot Ridge for an emotional reunion with Sylva and an even more fervent one with Mars, now married (shades of Ethan Frome) to wheelchair-bound Beverly, a plucky soul who understands (everybody understands everything here) the needs of her husband's former girlfriend, and even considerately perishes, leaving Avery and Mars together. It's probably needless to say that long before the story, uh, climaxes, ``Longing exploded into lust without containment and passion consumed them.'' And, just in case the sexual tension isn't high enough, the Marshalls own a tame parrot named ``Pecker'' (were not making this up). Danielle Steel could not have improved on the ending, in which even the acquisitive Ken (remember him?) more or less reforms, and all the loose ends of Avery's past are braided neatly together. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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