In the second book of the Avenue of Dreams series, Olivia Newport explores the complicated relationship between social classes while creating a story of courage, strength, and tender romance. Set against the glittering backdrop of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, this compelling story captures the tension between the wealthy class and the hardworking servants who made their lives comfortable.
Charlotte Farrow, a maid in the wealthy Banning household on Chicago’s opulent Prairie Avenue, has kept her baby boy a secret from her employers for nearly a year. But when the woman who has been caring for her son abruptly returns him, Charlotte must decide whether to come clean and face dismissal or keep her secret while the Bannings decide the child’s fate. Can she face the truth of her own past and open her heart to a future of her own? Or will life’s tragedies determine the future for her?
ISLAND BREEZES
This is a story of both courage and fear. Lucy Banning helped Charlotte keep her secret, but she married and left on an extended honeymoon to Europe.
Then the problems began. The woman who cared for Charlotte’s son had an out-of-town emergency, and a scullery maid discovered the boy in a laundry basket. That was when Charlottes deception began to explode with drama.
While fearing for the safety of both herself and her son, she does something that will probably cost her dearly.
Throughout all this, a romance is brewing. It seems that Charlotte’s fears may even cost her a chance with a good, loving suitor.
I’ve enjoyed visiting with the Bannings again and look forward to more books in the Avenue of Dreams series.
***A special thank you to Donna Hausler for providing a review copy.***
Olivia Newport is the author of?The Pursuit of Lucy Banning. Her novels twist through time to discover where faith and passions meet. Her husband and two adult children provide welcome distraction from the people stomping through her head on their way into her books. She chases joy in stunning Colorado at the foot of the Rockies, where daylilies grow as tall as she is.
Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, offers practical books that bring the Christian faith to everyday life. They publish resources from a variety of well-known brands and authors, including their partnership with MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and Hungry Planet.
Available January 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
Syndicated personal finance columnist Mary Hunt shares over 2,000 tips to make just about everything Cheaper, Better, Faster. Hunt has received thousands of tips and tricks from readers of her daily newspaper column, and she has selected the very best ways to save time and money in this ultimate guide to making life easier.
Cheaper, Better, Faster is all the best advice you’ve ever heard, collected into one handy volume. Every tip is short, to the point, and helps readers make the most of their money and time, making everyday life less hectic and more enjoyable.
Proven tips on everything from removing hairspray baked onto a curling iron to enjoying gourmet coffee without the gourmet price are included. Readers will learn how to keep their cats from eating their houseplants and know how to get stains out of white carpet.
Hunt hopes the useful and oftentimes humorous information in Cheaper, Better, Faster will help readers spend their money wisely and get creative by using everyday items to achieve the results they need – whether that means finding a wedding gift that won’t break the bank or getting a stain out of a new t-shirt.
ISLAND BREEZES
I’ve been a Mary Hunt email subscriber for a long time. I’ve only recently been introduced to her books. Debt-Proof Your Christmas was good, but this book tops it.
I’ve loved getting Mary’s email tips, but this book certainly beats that newsletter all to pieces.
Each chapter contains tips about a different category. Yep! All the same kind of tips are together, making it easy to find tips that you currently need.
Sixteen chapters. 386 pages. Lots of useful tips here. Right now I’m checking out tips on repairs and maintenance. We are not going to talk about my water leak.
***A special thank you to Donna Hausler for providing a review copy.***
Mary Hunt is an award-winning and bestselling author, syndicated columnist and sought-after motivational speaker who created a global platform that is making strides to help men and women battle the epidemic impact of consumer debt. She is founder and publisher of the interactive website Debt-Proof Living, which features financial tools, resources and information for her online members. Her books have sold more than a million copies and her daily newspaper column is nationally syndicated through Creators Syndicate and is enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of Everyday Cheapskate?readers. Hunt speaks widely on personal finance and has appeared on shows such as?Good Morning America, Oprah,?Dr. Phil and?Focus on the Family. She and her husband live in California.
Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, offers practical books that bring the Christian faith to everyday life. They publish resources from a variety of well-known brands and authors, including their partnership with MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and Hungry Planet.
Available January 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
***Special thanks to Althea Thompson for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Rita Hancock is a board-certified Physical Medicine specialist with subspecialty board certification in Pain Management, and she has been in full-time practice in Norman, Oklahoma for fourteen years. Currently, she serves as the Oklahoma delegate for the Christian Medical And Dental Association, as well as their official spokesperson on matters of diet and nutrition. Dr. Hancock is married to Ed and they have two children.
Visit the author’s website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
What’s blocking you from experiencing total wellness?
Research increasingly shows a strong connection between our spiritual life, our emotions, and our physical well being. Yet too often our physical conditions are treated without taking our whole lives into account. In Radical Well-being, Dr. Rita Hancock shows you how your mind, body, and spirit are connected and addresses the factors that can contribute, and even cause, illness, addictions, and chronic pain.
If you suffer from medical conditions like fibromyalgia, migraine headaches, neck or back pain, irritable bowel syndrome, jaw pain, food and drug allergies, depression, anxiety, or unwanted behaviors such as overeating, an eating disorder, overspending, drug abuse or alcoholism, Radical Well-being will show you a biblical, whole-body approach to overcoming your condition. With nearly twenty years of experience counseling patients from a balanced, mind/body/Holy Spirit perspective, Dr. Rita gives you practical nuts-and-bolts advice.
Product Details:
List Price: $16.99
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Siloam (January 8, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1616389737
ISBN-13: 978-1616389734:
ISLAND BREEZES
This book will take you on a journey of yourself. If you truly want to be an overcomer, get ready for the ride.
It’s time to start listening to God, and find release.
If you ernestly pray the prayers at6 the end of each chapter, you will be able to break through to old lies you may have been telling yourself fince childhood. It’s a relief to face the lies and finally be able to see yourself as God sees you.
I couldn’t read this book in a single sitting. I needed time to process it bit by bit. It was so worth it.
Some things sound too good to be true, and they are. This books is not. It can lead you to freedom from emotional bondage.
AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Don’t Believe Everything You Think
If I asked you to look at a group of women and pick out the person with the eating disorder, you wouldn’t choose Helen. She doesn’t fit the stereotype. She’s a slightly overweight, sixty-year-old grandmother. Surprise! Not all people with eating disorders are skinny, teenage girls.
As I interviewed Helen about her knee pain on that first medical visit, she repeatedly pointed out that she was desperate to lose weight so her knees would hurt less. On the surface that made sense. However, something wasn’t right about this particular situation. She seemed more fixated on the prospect of weight loss than on relieving the knee pain.
That’s when she starting asking me about my previous book, The Eden Diet. Apparently her daughter had lost a fair amount of weight on the diet, and Helen now wanted to try it.
I have to admit that I was a little confused by this point in the visit. She was on the schedule as wanting to be seen for her knees. So I just came out and asked, “Shouldn’t we be talking about your knees?” Helen looked down at the ground and then back up at me. “Well, I heard you don’t see just anybody for weight loss. I heard you mostly treat pain-management patients and just counsel them for weight loss on the side. I guess I figured that you could help me kill two birds with one stone.”
You have to commend her persistence. That’s faith and desperation rolled into one! I figured I’d better help her or she’d get some people to take the shingles off the roof of my office and lower her into the
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exam room through the ceiling on a stretcher while thinking, “If only I touch the hem of her lab coat, I’ll lose weight.”
As Helen and I dialogued in subsequent visits, I gleaned some insight into her underlying problem. As a child she internalized lies that led her into an eating disorder in her teenage years. She believed her mother would love her only if she was skinny. Her mother had been a dancer in her youth and pressured Helen and her sisters to not eat too much or they wouldn’t be wanted (by men). But Helen understood that nobody, not even her own mother, would want her if she were overweight.
Hence the eating disorder. She was trying to “works” her way into being good enough by manipulating (or trying to manipulate) her weight. Hidden lies and feelings of inadequacy, such as those Helen entertained, lead to emotional stress and strife. In turn those lies lead to overeating and other physical manifestations, such as pain and illness. It’s a common tale, one that another of my patients knows well.
A Little Girl Named Nancy
Nancy’s parents rarely had time for her. Her father was an attorney in a big Chicago law firm, and if he didn’t work long hours he wouldn’t stand a chance of becoming partner. Based on his own standards for success, that would have meant he was a total failure in life. He learned that way of thinking from his dad, who was also a highly successful, perfectionist, workaholic lawyer with low self-esteem deep down.
Nancy’s mother was a legal secretary in the same firm. She didn’t have to work overtime with her husband all those evenings, but she did so anyway, saying it was to help her husband get home earlier. Truthfully she just wanted to keep tabs on her good-looking, wealthy husband. She didn’t trust him around the perky little legal interns.
The one source of constancy in Nancy’s early life was her paternal grandfather. He babysat her most evenings after day care or school when her parents worked overtime, and he watched her most Saturdays too. The babysitting job kept him from getting lonely and depressed
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since his wife had passed away a few years before. Without the pairing,
both he and Nancy would have been alone.
Despite Nancy’s company Grandpa was still lonely in a different
kind of way. To fill that need, he fell into reading inappropriate magazines. He made a halfhearted attempt to hide the magazines from little Nancy but failed. She found them by accident one day shortly after her seventh birthday while looking for magazine pictures she could use
for a school art project.
A flurry of questions ran through her little mind when she found those pictures. “Why would Grandpa look at those magazines? Is this how men are supposed to look at women? Is this how women are supposed to be looked at?”
Though Nancy was young, she knew instinctively that her Grandpa’s magazines were naughty, and she felt bad about herself for having seen them. In fact, she experienced not just a single crush but a double crush to her self-esteem over this.
On one hand she couldn’t help but identify with the women in the pictures. If they were just lowly objects, then maybe that’s all she was too. After all, she was female, just like them. On the other hand, Nancy identified with her grandfather and felt deep shame. “Grandpa is bad for looking at these,” she thought, “so I must be bad too, because we’re
related and that means I’m like him.” The blow to her self-esteem stayed with her for a long time, compromising her romantic relationships with men later in life. She couldn’t trust them. Were they looking at her as a piece of meat or as a person? Would they betray her like her daddy betrayed her mommy? Or would they abandon her like her parents abandoned her to focus on their work? She was never sure.
This incident also marked the beginning of her overeating. On a subconscious level seeing those pictures at that impressionable age caused Nancy to feel vulnerable and out of control in addition to bad and dirty. Nancy decided she didn’t want anyone to look at her the way her grandfather looked at those women. So she ate to put a layer of insulation around her body. It backfired, though, because people looked anyway since she was so large.
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This issue with her grandfather wasn’t the only reason Nancy gained weight as a child. On some level, even though her daddy ultimately made partner in the firm and was able to spend more time at home, Nancy always felt a sense of abandonment due to his earlier absence. She figured that she was unworthy of Daddy’s attention. If she were a good enough daughter, maybe he would have stayed home.
These feelings of low self-esteem and abandonment gave her another reason to eat to keep people away as an adult. If nobody became interested in her romantically because she was overweight, then nobody would abandon or betray her later on.
Of course, during her childhood Nancy was totally unaware of these buried feelings. It wasn’t until she underwent counseling to save her third failing marriage that she began to understand the psychology that motivated her to eat as a child.
Through counseling, Nancy learned that she felt shameful, vulnerable, and out of control as a child, especially sexually but also emotionally. Eating was her unconscious attempt to feel safe and in control. She ate to medicate her low self-esteem and anxiety, and she ate to keep away unwanted attention.
Composite Patients
Can you relate to any part of Helen’s or Nancy’s story? They actually represent composites of a multitude of women that I’ve counseled for weight loss, pain, and other stress-related health problems over the years. In fact, all the patient examples that I present in this book are composites—yet every situation I describe is real.
As you can see by Helen’s and Nancy’s examples, fear, sexuality, and feeling inadequate or out of control are common themes that contribute to aberrant eating behavior in women. Other common issues include guilt, low self-esteem, abandonment or loss (such as parental divorce), parental alcoholism, and physical illness during childhood. Because I hear these themes frequently in my medical practice, you’ll see them often in the patient composites I include in this book.
My intent in presenting these composites is to help you understand
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and manage your emotional triggers and, consequently, have an easier time letting go of your addictions, unwanted health behaviors, and physical pain. Even better than the physical benefits though, is the peace, love, and joy you feel when you break free from false beliefs and feel more of the fruit of the Spirit in your life. I assure you that the freedom from emotional bondage feels even better than the physical health benefits.
The Lies That Bind
In the following pages I list fundamental beliefs that have triggered feelings of stress, depression, and anxiety in some of my patients. In many cases the emotions caused by these beliefs led my patients to reach for false comforters (food, alcohol, gambling, spending, overworking, etc.) to try to feel better.
Before you read the list, please pray (see Appendix A for more help with prayer). Ask God to reveal only the information that you can handle, and ask Him to reveal if you should dig through these subconscious beliefs with the help of a Christian counselor. Not everyone is meant to “go there” without the help of another human. God gave us Christian counselors and psychologists for a reason.
Now if the time is right (and only you and God can be the judge of that, so proceed at your own risk and do so prayerfully), read the list and see if any of the lies strike a nerve. Make a checkmark by each one that does.
Keep in mind that everything on the bulleted list is a lie. Even though you see the accusations against you in print, don’t be fooled into believing them.
• You’re fat.
• You’re ugly.
• You’re stupid.
• You’re unlovable.
• God doesn’t love you.
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• You’re bad (or not good enough).
• You’re worthless.
• You’ll never amount to anything.
• You shouldn’t have been born.
• They’re going to leave you.
• You don’t deserve to be loved.
• It’s all you’re fault.
• You’re dirty.
• You’re shameful.
• It’s your fault your parents divorced.
• You’re unforgivable because of the abortion.
• You’re a bad mother for giving up your baby when you were a teenager.
• If you were worth anything, she wouldn’t have given you up for adoption.
• Your parents adopted you to fix their marriage; now their happiness is up to you.
• If you were good, your dad (or mom) would have stuck around.
• It’s your fault your mom or dad drank.
• It’s your fault your dad abused your mom (or vice versa).
• It’s your fault he sexually abused you.
• You deserve to be treated badly.
• She’ll never let your daddy hear the last of it if you tell on him.
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• Your mother won’t believe you if you tell her about the abuse.
• It’s your fault he (or she) left.
• It’s your fault he (or she) died.
• You’re just like your bad mother.
• You’re just like your bad father.
• You’re not as good as your brother or sister.
• You’re an accident.
• You weren’t wanted.
• You can’t be forgiven for what you did.
• They’re going to leave you if they find out you’re bad.
• You have to try to be perfect to make up for being bad.
• You don’t deserve anybody’s time.
• God’s promises aren’t meant for you.
Remember, these are lies that have nothing to do with who you are today. It’s important to identify the beliefs that you learned in the past, as we will see. Realize that the time has come to let go of the lies, and I help you do that in this book. Now let’s talk about other sources of false childhood beliefs.
Lies That Make You Think You’re Fat
Because my daughter is a teenager, I spend a fair amount of time watching the effects of peer pressure on the kids in her age group. Even the more wholesome TV programs that are geared to her age group show perfectly manicured, extremely cute girls with perfect clothing and most excellent hair. Naturally, real-life girls of that age group are bound to feel inadequate.
I know about peer pressure for another reason. I temporarily volunteered my services to online “ask the expert” websites. I quit after
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having to answer the same anonymous question a thousand times from teenage girls: “Dr. Rita, please tell me how to lose thirty pounds in the next three weeks. I’m going to be in my sister’s wedding, and I’m a total blimp. I’m over one hundred thirty pounds, and I’m only five foot seven inches. I want to get down to the same weight as the other bridesmaids.”
How did I respond? “Honey, your real problem isn’t your weight. You may have an eating disorder. You should talk with your parents and get some counseling.”
I wish I could have spoken freely about my faith to those girls on that secular site. If I had been able to, I would have said, “No matter how hard you try, you will never be somebody else, and you will never feel that you’re good enough after you lose weight if you feel inadequate before. Your greatest journey is to get in line with God’s will for your life, not to get in line with God’s will for somebody else’s life.”
Thinking you’re fat eventually makes you become fat. Your actions affect your attitudes, and your attitudes affect your actions. Watch what you think because it will affect what you do.
You Have to Ask the Questions
If you aren’t sure about what triggers you to reach for false comforters, start asking questions: “Immediately before I feel tempted to [eat, drink, gamble, shop, overwork, etc.], do I feel fear, anger, or low selfesteem? Do I feel stupid, worthless, or out of control? Or do I feel unnurtured? Or is it something else?”
And how do I feel after I utilize my false comforter? Do those emotions go away? If so for how long do they go away?” As I said, the false comforter is not the underlying problem. It’s only the attempted solution to get away from the unwanted emotion.
Many people feel out of control and hence, fearful or anxious. They use their false comforters to try to regain a sense of control. “Nobody can tell me what to [eat, buy, smoke, drink, feel, etc.].” Or they use the false comforters as short-term distractions to escape their emotions.
Hancock-Radical.indd 8
They cover their anger, fear, or low self-esteem with alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, cutting, or some other unhealthy behavior.
The Right Questions Break Down Barriers
Surveying and assessing your emotions can definitely help you identify your triggers. However, it’s even better to petition the all-knowing Creator of the universe for answers. He knows the nature of your deep-down issues better than you do!
You may be thinking, “But I’ve asked Him for answers a million times, and He doesn’t answer!” If you feel as if God isn’t answering you, or if you feel “lost” in your journey for answers, realize the problem isn’t likely to be on God’s end. You may have barriers that prevent you from hearing from God.
Many factors can serve as barriers that block your reception of God’s healing. For example, maybe you believe lies about yourself as a result of childhood events or abuse. Or maybe you need to repent of past sins. Maybe you need to extend forgiveness to those who hurt you. Maybe you are mad at God because you couldn’t find Him during your times of trouble. Maybe you feel ashamed and are hiding from God. Or maybe it’s something entirely different. Maybe you have emotional or physical barriers.
No matter what caused your barriers to go up, asking God the right questions about the nature of those barriers can help to tear them down.
To help you overcome your barriers, at the ends of the chapters in Parts 1-4, I offer sample questions that you can ask God during prayer. To formulate these questions, I borrowed from a number of healing disciplines, including Christian inner-healing ministry, psychology, physical therapy, and manual medicine, all of which talk about overcoming barriers of one form or another. That way, once your barriers come down, you can better receive healing truth from God and, in turn, experience freedom from your emotional triggers and bondage to false comforters.
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Action Point
Ask God in Prayer
* Express your thankfulness and confidence, “Dear Lord, thank You for the healing truth that I am about to receive.”
* Ask for a new start, “As I recall my past sins, please forgive me, wash me clean, and make me brand new.”
* Ask God to help you drop your defenses, “Lord, please amplify my ability to hear and/or understand deep healing truth as I read.”
* Ask for compassion, “Lord, please help me to have compassion toward myself and others. Help me forgive those who hurt me.”
This book will take you on a journey of yourself. If you truly want to be an overcomer, get ready for the ride.
It’s time to start listening to God, and find release.
If you ernestly pray the prayers at6 the end of each chapter, you will be able to break through to old lies you may have been telling yourself fince childhood. It’s a relief to face the lies and finally be able to see yourself as God sees you.
I couldn’t read this book in a single sitting. I needed time to process it bit by bit. It was so worth it.
Some things sound too good to be true, and they are. This books is not. It can lead you to freedom from emotional bondage.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” MartinLutherKing, Jr.
What happened to that dream? It seems as if racial and class division is encouraged more and more.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
Amanda Cabot explores themes of love, courage and sacrifice in the second book of the Westward Winds series. With an authentic backdrop of 1880s Wyoming, Cabot creates characters whose struggle to forge a life in the old West ultimately wins your heart.
After the loss of her husband and the birth of her baby, Charlotte has had a long, hard year. But when a notorious robber believes she knows the location of a long-lost treasure, she flees to Cheyenne and opens a dressmaker’s shop to lie low and make a living. When wealthy cattle baron and political hopeful Barrett Landry enters the shop to visit her best customer, Miriam, Charlotte feels drawn to him.
If Barrett is to be a senator of the soon-to-be state of Wyoming, he must make a sensible match, and Miriam has all the right connections. Yet he can’t shake the feeling that Charlotte holds the key to his heart and his future.
Soon the past comes to call, and Barrett’s plans crumble around him. Will Charlotte and Barrett find the courage to look love in the face? Or will their fears blot out any chance for happiness?
ISLAND BREEZES
Charlotte fled with her baby to Cheyenne in hopes of safety, but never really feels totally safe. She did manage to build a successful business, but constantly worries about being found.
Barrett wants to be elected senator of Wyoming. He’s getting serious about popping the question to a society lady who’s father can help his political aspirations.
It’s neither safe for Charlotte and her special son nor expedient for Barrett, but the two of them are being drawn to each other.
Danger soon rides into town and tries to steal what happiness might be in store for the couple.
Ms Cabot has taken care of summer and spring in her Westward Winds series. I’m ready for fall and winter.
***A special thank you to Donna Hausler for providing a review copy.***
Amanda Cabot is an accomplished author under various pen names and a popular speaker. The author of Paper Roses, Scattered Petals, Tomorrow’s Garden, and Summer of Promise, she is also a charter member of Romance Writers of America, the cofounder of its New Jersey chapter, a member of the ACFW, and an avid traveler. She lives in Wyoming.
Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, offers practical books that bring the Christian faith to everyday life.? They publish resources from a variety of well-known brands and authors, including their partnership with MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and Hungry Planet.
Available January 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group
Laurie Alice Eakes brings to life a gripping story of trust, deception and bittersweet loss, as a young woman learns the true meaning of choices of the heart. In the third book of The Midwives series, you will be transported back to 1840’s Appalachia with a tender romance that includes closely guarded secrets and a bitter feud.
Esther Cherrett comes from a proud line of midwives and was trained by her mother to take over the family calling. But when a scandal threatens all she holds dear, Esther takes a position as a teacher in the western mountains of Virginia instead. There she finds herself in the midst of a deadly family feud and courted by two men on opposite sides of the conflict. When it seems as though her past has followed her all the way into the mountains, all she wants is to run away again.
ISLAND BREEZES
She wanted to leave it all behind — her past, her vocation and all the ugly rumors. She slipped out in the middle of the night without leaving a note.
She ended up way out in the boonies as a teacher. It was an odd situation that put her in the middle of a family feud.
As a nurse, I know you can’t really leave behind the healer in you. Esther couldn’t. It could even get her killed. It might also bring about her redemption. Esther’s dilemma will touch your heart as you see possibilities for a love match on either side of the feud.
I’m definitely enjoying Ms Eakes series, The Midwives.
***A special thanks to Donna Hausler for providing a review copy.***
Laurie Alice Eakes is the author of Lady in the Mist, Heart’s Safe Passage, A Necessary Deception, A Flight of Fancy, and several other novels. She won a National Readers Choice Award for Best Regency in 2007 for Family Guardian. Laurie Alice writes full-time from her home in Texas, where she lives with her husband and sundry dogs and cats.
Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, offers practical books that bring the Christian faith to everyday life.? They publish resources from a variety of well-known brands and authors, including their partnership with MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and Hungry Planet.
Available January 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
***Special thanks to Georgiana Daniels for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Georgiana Daniels resides in the beautiful mountains of Arizona with her super-generous husband and three talented daughters. She graduated from Northern Arizona University with a bachelor’s degree in public relations, and now has the privilege of homeschooling by day and wrestling with the keyboard by night. She enjoys sharing God’s love through fiction, and is exceedingly thankful for her own happily ever after.
Visit the author’s website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Inheriting her estranged father’s property isn’t the reason Robyn Warner wanted to come back to Pine Hollow. She thought she’d make amends with her father—but his sudden death made that impossible. And when she learns the identity of the handyman fixing the run-down cabins, Robyn is ready to flee Pine Hollow again. Caleb Sloane, the cop responsible for her father’s accident, just wants to uphold his promise and then return to the force. But he can’t seem to walk away. After all, he understands about guilt and regret. And he’ll do everything he can to help Robyn find healing, happiness and—just maybe—a lifetime of love.
Product Details:
List Price: $5.75
Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Love Inspired (December 18, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0373877927
ISBN-13: 978-0373877928
ISLAND BREEZES
What a mess! Can Caleb and Robyn get past all those secrets? Each time it seems possible, another secret pops up.
Love is never easy, but these two are plopped down into a situation which makes even friendship difficult.
You’ll need a few of those tissues as Caleb and Robyn struggle to overcome secrets revealed.
AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:
If the rest of the property was in the same sad condition as the front porch with its missing rails and bowed floorboards, Robyn Warner would be in Pine Hollow, Arizona, far longer than she’d anticipated. She wheeled her suitcase over the flagstone walkway and paused at the foot of her father’s home to absorb the onslaught of memories.
It wasn’t too late to turn around and hand the keys back to the lawyer managing her father’s estate, though the sad huddle of cabins hardly qualified as such. What had once been a cozy mountain resort now looked pitiable and highly susceptible to a stiff wind. Her father certainly hadn’t done her any favors by willing the property to her, but after more than a dozen years of silence, she was glad to be remembered at all.
Gravel crunched near cabin two—Robyn’s favorite during her summer vacation stays as a child. A man in work pants and a paint-splattered T-shirt meandered out from between the ramshackle buildings. “Can I help you? It’s easy to get lost out here.”
“It certainly looks different than I remember, but this is the right place.” She shaded her eyes to get a better look at the man who was tall and muscular without being imposing. He was the most clean-cut maintenance man she’d ever seen—and a nice contrast to the surfers with sand in their hair she was used to back at the surf shop she managed in California. She propped up the suitcase. “I’m Robyn Warner. And you are?”
“Caleb.” He gestured toward the road. “Pine Hollow Resort is on the other side of the wash, about five miles down. Are you sure that’s not where you were headed?”
“I’m here to check out.. ” She caught herself before referring to Lakeside Cabins as hers. “I’m staying here. Dan Dawson was my dad.” She fished the keys from her pocket and held them up. “I’ll just let myself in.”
The handyman scrutinized her as though assessing her legitimacy, much the same way her half siblings, Brad and Abby, had during the funeral last week. Gauging her motives and questioning her right to be there. Her right to grieve.
He swiped his brow with his arm and slid on a pair of sunglasses. “No one told me you were coming or I’d have cleared out.”
“If it makes you feel better, the lawyer didn’t tell me about you, either.” She offered a tentative smile. “Or maybe he did, and I was still in shock.” She recalled her conversation with Phil Harding, who’d upended her world when he contacted her after the funeral and said Lakeside Cabins was hers, though all her father’s personal items would go to Brad and Abby. “Do you work here?”
Caleb shuffled the paintbrush from one hand to the other. “I’ve been fixing Lakeside up, but I can leave if you’d rather have the place to yourself.” His tone held a hard edge.
“Not at all. I’ll be glad to have your help. It looks like we have a lot of work to do.” Though she didn’t have a clue how to pay him. She made a mental note to ask the lawyer if there were provisions of some kind. After taking an unpaid leave from the surf shop, she was living on savings—meager ones, at that. “The sooner Lakeside is all fixed up, the sooner I can sell it.”
“It could take a while.” Caleb’s neck bobbed with a hard swallow, as though he wanted to say more. His sunglasses kept her from further reading his expression, though it was becoming clear she made him uncomfortable.
“With the two of us working together, it’ll speed things along.” She smiled, hoping to defrost his stoic demeanor. Having an easy rapport with the handyman would make the work and the memories of Lakeside less painful. “Either way, I’ll be here as long as it takes. But please, keep doing whatever you were doing.” She gestured toward cabin two. “Every little bit helps.”
Caleb offered a curt nod before he crossed back over the clearing and disappeared behind the small building.
Wind moaned through the trees, sending birds skittering from the branches. Robyn rubbed a chill from her arms. Something about being in the quiet space where her father lived so many years without her, so many years without birthdays and Christmases and simple phone calls, left her unsettled. She wished she’d disregarded her mother’s repeated warnings to leave her dad and his family alone, that she was no longer welcome to visit. She should have at least tried to make peace. Now she’d never have the chance.
Robyn drew a fortifying breath before inserting the key into the lock. She worked the key and turned the knob several times, but it refused to budge. Before she could shimmy it out and try again, the phone in her pocket rang. Her thumb hovered over the button until she finally worked up the courage to answer. “Abby, how are you?”
“As good as can be expected. Listen, Brad and I haven’t finished moving everything out yet, so he wants to make sure you don’t take the armoire in the bedroom.” Abby’s voice had matured and no longer resembled the giggly pre-teen Robyn remembered.
She plugged her ear to drown out the wind. “I haven’t even been inside yet. Trust me, I wouldn’t have a way to move the furniture out even if I wanted to.” She glanced at the rental car she’d put on her painfully thin credit card.
“Sorry, I know it’s awkward.” A long pause stretched over the line. “Brad just wants me to remind you that the furniture and personal belongings are ours. We’ll be back to get them.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” She swallowed her sadness. She and Abby had once been close until the argument that drove Robyn away from Pine Hollow—an argument with their father about how she felt less important than his other children. Lately she’d begun to crave the closeness of a real family, and now that circumstances had brought her back, she’d do whatever it took to restore her relationship with Brad and Abby. To find some sort of normalcy.
“Good. We wouldn’t want any misunderstandings.”
“Abby, I would never take what doesn’t belong to me.” She fingered the cross on her necklace and prayed for wisdom. “Maybe when you come out for the furniture we can have dinner. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
Silence pulsed between them until Abby cleared her throat. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We’re still shaken up.”
So was she. The tragedy of losing a parent—even an estranged one—was overwhelming.
“I mean, why would Dad leave Lakeside Cabins to you? No offense, but you haven’t exactly been around.”
The words stung with truth, and her face heated from the rejection. “I understand. Give me a call when you’re ready to come by.”
The line went dead. “Is everything okay?”
She whipped around, disconcerted. “Caleb, you startled me.” She scanned his face to figure out how much he’d overheard. His expression remained neutral behind the sunglasses, which left her even more flustered.
“I heard voices and thought maybe you were talking to someone.”
“I was. It was a private conversation.” She jammed the phone into her pocket.
“I was only trying to help.” Caleb held up his hands in surrender, then turned and stalked off.
“Wait.” She scrambled down the stairs, her sandals slapping the wood. Exactly why she chased after the maintenance man or even cared what he thought, she’d have to reason out later. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
Caleb angled toward her, his mouth quirked. The masculine scent of turpentine and hard work drifted off him, and for some reason, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “Apology accepted.” His somber tone seemed to say otherwise.
Robyn ran her hand through her hair, snarled from the wind. “Really—I’m sorry. I’m not exactly great company right now after what happened to my dad. I’m normally easy to get along with—you’ll see when we fix this place up, and before you know it I’ll be long gone.”
Judging from Caleb’s formidable posture and the twitch of his jaw, her departure wouldn’t be soon enough.
Caleb stormed into the office of Harding and Company and bypassed the receptionist. Without knocking, he entered the office of Phil Harding, attorney-at-law. “Why didn’t you tell me she was coming?”
Phil tapped the keys on his computer without missing a stroke. “Almost finished. Then we can talk.”
“You should’ve at least given me a heads-up.” He pulled the door closed with a thud. “Didn’t you think I might need that bit of information?”
All the way from the outskirts of Pine Hollow, he had rehearsed the diatribe he wanted to unleash on his so-called friend. But none of his imagined scenarios included Phil calmly pecking away at the keyboard.
Phil closed the program and spun around in his leather chair. “I presume you’re talking about Robyn.”
“Who else?” He dropped onto the cushioned seat, and if he dirtied the upholstery with his paint-stained pants, so be it.
“What’d she do?”
“She showed up.” Simply arriving at the cabins was enough to infuse him with a jolt of reality. What originally seemed like a brilliant way to fulfill his promise quickly turned into the single worst idea he’d ever had the moment Robyn, with her sun-bleached hair and sorrow-filled eyes, told him she was Dan’s daughter.
“Look, Caleb, I realize it’s a little awkward.”
“You think?” He blew out a frustrated breath. “I tried to play it cool in front of her, but you have no idea what that was like.”
Phil removed his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. In a placating tone, he resumed. “I can’t control every variable. Did it occur to you I might have other projects I’m working on?”
He pushed out of the chair. “A phone call, Phil. That’s all I needed.”
