Firebird

Schooled in the Ivy League, and engaged to the daughter of the wealthiest landowner in Flint Hills, Kansas, rancher Ethan Brown's life seems secure, until he falls in love with an isolated violinist. A first novel. 100,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo. Lit Guild Main.

A compelling new commercial voice, Graham brings an engaging narrative style to her first novel, a romantic tale set in the Flint Hills of the Kansas prairie. Ethan Brown is a gentleman rancher and the sole attorney in Cottonwood Falls, but he's a lawyer with a heart: his office sign quotes WordsworthAa reference to his love of English poetry and to an academic career sidelined by his desire to stay on his home ground, where he and longtime girlfriend Katie Anne are taking their time tying the knot. Enter Annette Zeldin, a concert violinist in town from Paris with her young daughter, for her mother's funeral. Annette strikes most of the townspeople as foreign and haughty, but Ethan is smitten. In fact, he's so disturbed by Annette's presence that he firms up his wedding plans in an attempt to keep his life wrinkle-free. Predictably, Ethan and Annette fall in love, and Ethan tries unsuccessfully to break off his engagement. When a disastrous fire moves through the area, tragedy ensues and the lives of all the protagonists are irrevocably changed. Graham creates solid scenes of domestic life and develops her characterizations with a sure hand. But she gives her tale an unearthly twist that's disappointingly artificial and requires the reader's leap of faith, not once but twice. She also has a habit of describing emotional states in purple prose. That said, however, her dexterous storytelling pulls at the heartstrings, and her evocations of the wind and skies over the Kansas prairie give an extra dimension to a multifaceted love story that's sure to be a strong contender for the women's' fiction hit of the season. 150,000 first printing; $400,000 ad/promo; audio rights to HarperCollins; foreign rights sold in U.K., Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain and Sweden; Literary Guild main selection; author tour. (June) FYI: Graham has signed a three-book contract with Putnam and, in an unprecedented move, the Literary Guild and several foreign publishers have followed suit with multibook deals for this first-novelist.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

First-timer Graham crosses lust with New Age longings in a hybrid-romance about a violinist who wins her man only after she dies. In Flint Hills, Kansas, Ethan Brown is called Wordsworth because he studied at Yale and has an extensive library in his law office downtown. Divorced, estranged from his teenaged son, and a little lonely despite his engagement to Katie Anne Mackey, daughter of the areas most imposing cattle rancher, Ethan keeps his spirits up by focusing on his plan to start his own ranch adjoining the Mackeysuntil, that is, he meets the new woman in town, Annette Zeldin, a now-famous violinist who left Kansas two decades ago, married, divorced, then stayed in Paris to raise a daughter and become Europeanized. The locals scoff at her, and at her daughter's French accent, but Ethan is mesmerized by her depth and beauty--qualities lacking in the brash Katie Anne. Annette is in town to bury her mother before leaving forever, but her attraction to Ethan, who can quote Yeats to her on command, convinces her to stay. The mutual attraction is so strong that Ethan breaks his engagement and Annette turns her back on Paris to be a housewife in the Kansas hills. But when Katie Anne announces that she's pregnant, Ethan feels honor-bound to marry herand, soon after the wedding, a fire courses through the Mackeys' and Ethan's land, killing Annette and burning Katie Anne beyond recognition. As Annette's spirit follows her mother toward heaven, she realizes that her love for her daughter necessitates that she remain bound to the world of the living: so she inhabits the body of her fellow burn victim, Ethans wife Katie Anne. The lovers are together at lastbut will Ethan, now revolted by the sight of Katie Anne, ever realize that the woman he loves is inside his wife's disfigured body? Grahams body-switch gimmick is certainly a weird one, but her unabashed passion for cowboys, French wine, and all things romantic may win her an enthusiastic following. (First printing of 150,000; Literary Guild Main selection; $400,000 ad/promo; author tour before publication) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The Flint Hills of Kansas provide the austere and finally malevolent mise-en-scene for this high-gloss, screamingly melodramatic romance, a first novel by an undeniably talented writer. Not only does Graham write well, she cleverly exploits nearly every stereotype known to the genre and offers some truly mind-boggling plot twists. Her hero, Ethan, is a wealthy, handsome cowboy and a brilliant lawyer who loves poetry, the only culturally aware person in his tiny, mean-spirited Kansas enclave. He is expected to marry Katie Ann, the perky daughter of a rich, influential rancher. Katie Ann is much younger than Ethan, and much crasser, but their liaison seems just right for the circumstances until a neighbor dies and her beautiful and cosmopolitan daughter, Annette, arrives to attend her funeral. Annette managed to escape the incessant wind and indigenous obsession with cattle to become a world-famous concert violinist based in Paris. No one knows anything about her ghoulishly (and wildly improbable) tragic past, and only a few people, most notably Ethan, are pleased by her decision to stick around. And so the love triangle is in place: sensitive cowboy falls for gorgeous musician; fiancee goes berserk. But here's where Graham goes for broke. Determined to keep her man, Katie Ann plays the oldest trick in the book and tells him she's pregnant, then nature erupts in protest against this travesty of true love: the prairie bursts into flames; key characters die; and Graham pretends to get gothic. An unabashedly manipulative and pretentious bit of pop fiction, this is sure to thrill thousands, just as calculated. Donna Seaman