by Carla Kelly
Paperback, 298 pages
Published
November 11th 2014
by Cedar Fort Publishing & MediaMy Source: I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Description: Beautiful Lily Branson learns that her wayward father has lost his Wyoming cattle ranch in a card game to handsome cowboy Jack Sinclair, no less! When a series of deadly winter storms sets in, Lily and Jack must work together to save the cattle—as well as their hearts.
My Review: Lily has spent her entire life trying to feel like she fits in. Her mother is black and her father is white and in the 1800s in England, that isn't a great combination to be. Lily's father seems like a nice man, yet he spends all his money on liquor and fails at every endeavor he embarks on because of this vice. When Lily's uncle ships her off to Wyoming to live on her father's big ranch, she finds that not much has changed--her father is the same as ever...and has lost the ranch. The life that Lily builds that winter really tells of her character. She's used to feeling inferior and works hard anyway.
Lily is such a great character! I love how she doesn't let prejudices get her down. She finds that the ragtag ranch people are made up of all kinds--from mixed races to good ole Southern boys to Indians to uppity women who look down on everyone. Lily makes the best of her situation and pulls her resources together to make things work. I love the way the characters rely on one another and use their strengths to overcome trials.
Of course, Jack is awesome. Right away, he admires Lily's tea/coffee colored skin and accepts her for who she is, really focusing on the beautiful parts to her--her voice, her kindness, her soul. He's a great advocate for Lily and her father.
The way the characters learned to pull together and the way the story gently progressed were my favorite parts. Nothing is glossed over--the details are real. I love a good, clean romance, but romance wasn't the main focus--and I still really appreciated the story.
Content: Clean!
Although
Carla Kelly is well known among her readers as a writer of Regency
romance, her main interest (and first writing success) is Western
American fiction—more specifically, writing about America's Indian Wars.
Although she had sold some of her work before, it was not until Carla
began work in the National Park Service as a ranger/historian at Fort
Laramie National Historic Site did she get serious about her writing
career. (Or as she would be the first to admit, as serious as it gets.)Carla wrote a series of what she now refers to as the "Fort Laramie stories," which are tales of the men, women and children of the Indian Wars era in Western history. Two of her stories, A Season for Heroes and Kathleen Flaherty's Long Winter, earned her Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America. She was the second woman to earn two Spurs from WWA (which, as everyone knows, is all you need to ride a horse). Her entire Indian Wars collection was published in 2003 as Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army. It remains her favorite work.
The mother of five children, Carla has always allowed her kids to earn their keep by appearing in her Regencies, most notably Marian's Christmas Wish, which is peopled by all kinds of relatives. Grown now, the Kelly kids are scattered here and there across the U.S. They continue to provide feedback, furnish fodder for stories and make frantic phone calls home during the holidays for recipes. (Carla Kelly is some cook.)
Carla's husband, Martin, is Director of Theatre at Valley City State University, in Valley City, North Dakota. Carla is currently overworked as a staff writer at the local daily newspaper. She also writes a weekly, award-winning column, "Prairie Lite."
Carla only started writing Regencies because of her interest in the Napoleonic Wars, which figures in many of her Regency novels and short stories. She specializes in writing about warfare at sea, and about the ordinary people of the British Isles who were, let's face it, far more numerous than lords and ladies.
Hobbies? She likes to crochet afghans, and read British crime fiction and history, principally military history. She's never happier than talking about the fur trade or Indian Wars with Park Service cronies. Her most recent gig with the National Park Service was at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site on the Montana/North Dakota border.
Here's another side to this somewhat prosaic woman: She recently edited the fur trade journal of Swiss artist Rudolf F. Kurz (the 1851-1852 portion), and is gratified now and then to be asked to speak on scholarly subjects. She has also worked for the State Historical Society of North Dakota as a contract researcher. This has taken her to glamorous drudgery in several national archives and military history repositories. Gray archives boxes and old documents make her salivate.
Her mantra for writing comes from the subject of her thesis, Robert Utley, that dean of Indian Wars history. He told her the secret to writing is "to put your ass in the chair and keep it there until you're done." He's right, of course.
Her three favorite fictional works have remained constant through the years, although their rankings tend to shift: War and Peace, The Lawrenceville Stories, and A Town Like Alice. Favorite historical works are One Vast Winter Count, On the Border with Mackenzie and Crossing the Line. Favorite crime fiction authors are Michael Connelly, John Harvey and Peter Robinson.
And that's all she can think of that would interest anyone. Carla Kelly is quite ordinary, except when she is sometimes prevailed upon to sing a scurrilous song about lumberjacks, or warble "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in Latin.
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