When Venus Fell

Deborah Smith's hardcover debut, A Place to Call Home, secured her standing as one of the most appealing new voices in Southern and romance fiction. Now, in this provocative and enchanting new novel, she writes of a long journey from tragedy to hope, a story of love, choices, and miracles.

To look at her, you wouldn't think Venus Arinelli was once a child piano prodigy destined for the world's finest concert halls. And you wouldn't think she had gotten her name from a tiny piece of white quartz--"a piece of the evening star"--given to her mother by a small boy in a remote Tennessee valley. Venus's waist-length curtain of platinum braids, pierced navel, and cleavage have paid the bills for herself and her fragile sister in their ten ragtag years playing music on the bar circuit. Ten years since their father died in a jail cell and federal bullies seized all Venus and Ella owned--except their music and a single photograph.

All her life Venus has cherished that picture of her just-wed parents and the mountain boy who inspired her name. Now, in a smoky Chicago bar, that stranger stands before her. He is Gib Cameron, looking as battered and wary as a vice cop but too well dressed.

He has tracked her down to invite her to the grand reopening of Cameron Hall, a historic mountain inn whose very first guests were Venus's wildly-in-love parents. There--amid the eccentric Cameron clan--Venus just might rediscover their dreams.

But between Gib and Venus yawns an abyss. He cannot forget she's the daughter of a man branded a traitor. She looks at him--a God-fearing Citadel graduate sprung from generations of patriots--and sees everything she has hated since she lost her father.

With Deborah Smith's trademark blend of tenderness, humor, sexiness, and poignancy, When Venus Fell is a tale of loyalty and betrayal, family and honor, that will move readers--to laughter and to tears...and to return to its world again and again.

Deborah Smith is the author of such well-loved novels as A Place to Call Home, Blue Willow, and Miracle. She lives in Georgia.