Synopsis
Five Star First Edition Romances are well-reviewed original romances that have been carefully selected and edited to appeal to a broad range of fans. They feature strong women characters who deal directly and honestly with issues that women have had to contend with for centuries. There will be a romantic relationship involved, but it may not be the focus of the story. This series will also include an occasional high-quality women's fiction title.All subgenres of romance will be contemporary, historical, regency, futuristic, fantasy, romantic suspense, and multicultural romance. This is a series designed to please fans of the Romance genre as well as mainstream women's fiction readers.Four people in Woodbridge, Oregon are connected by ties of community, past and present and their stories unfold in both times. They are lonely and at risk emotionally. They have desires, fears and secrets. Lee Jamison clings to romantic dreams of the mythical West while his former lover, Doris, is growing increasingly restless within the confines of a small town. Seventeen-year-old Charles is struggling with his own self-destructive impulses while Charlotte is balancing the need for nearly endless physical labor with her failing strength and a haunting secret from her past.
Reviews
Four loners touch each other's lives in Thompson's circa 1950 drama. Lee Jamison, rootless as ever, longs for the old West. His ramblings bring him to Woodbridge, Oregon, where a former lover, Doris Gooding, tends the hardware store after the untimely death of her husband. Charlotte Domingo, now 80 and in waning health, fends for herself in her cabin in the woods in the company of her beloved animals and dead husband's ghost, while 17-year-old Charles Ballou, of mixed white and Native American heritage, finds comfort with this grandmother figure as he searches for his identity. Thompson reveals the social constructs of small-town America through her portrayal of Doris--whose reputation is soiled by her affair with Lee, while Lee, like all men, remains unblemished--and, in scenes of suspense and murder in a logging camp and at a wild horse roundup, considers how the West has changed. Although short on style and long on story, Thompson succeeds in portraying magnetic characters who struggle to adapt to a changing world. Suzanne Young
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