Montana Rose

This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
Montana Rose
Barbour Publishing, Inc (July 1, 2009)
by
Mary Connealy

Montana Rose is a love story. But it’s love on more than one level. It’s about newlyweds learning to know each other and growing in love. Look a little deeper and it’s a story about God’s love and Christian community. There’s even a story about the failure of love. Connealy skillfully weaves several threads together to create a complex and suspenseful story. While the young couple struggles with misunderstanding, self-doubt and her past, a very real threat emerges and keeps intruding into their life together.

I was drawn into the story from the first sentence and enjoyed watching the complex characters develop as the story progressed, with one exception. I couldn’t help thinking the young husband was too good to be true. At 23 he is already close to the ideal Godly man. His only fault is a temper that he controls rigidly with prayer. A bigger problem for me was that the dialogue was often drawn out, especially when the characters talked about the Lord. In fact, the last half of the book felt preachy. I don’t know any Christians who talk quite like that. But it did lead to a good ending. I anticipated the way the conflict was resolved as a possible solution, but I loved the way it was done. With God’s help, Christians do overcome. The only thing that left me unsatisfied was the resolution to one of the minor threads. I feel there is another book there waiting to be written. Overall, if you like western Christian romances, you’ll enjoy this one.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mary's writing journey is similar to a lot of others. Boil it down to persistence, oh, go ahead and call it stubbornness. She just kept typing away. She think the reason she did it was because she was more or less a dunce around people—prone to sit silently when she really ought to speak up(or far worse, speak up when she ought to sit silently).

So, Mary had all these things, she want to say, in her head; the perfect zinger to the rude cashier, which you think of an hour after you’ve left the store, the perfect bit of wisdom when someone needs help, which doesn’t occur to you until they solve their problems themselves, the perfect guilt trip for the kids, which you don’t say because you’re not an idiot. She keep all this wit to herself, much to the relief of all who know her, and then wrote all her great ideas into books. It’s therapeutic if nothing else, and more affordable than a psychiatrist.

So then a very nice, oh so nice publishing company like Barbour Heartsong comes along and says, “Hey, we’ll pay you money for this 45,000 word therapy session.” That’s as sweet as it gets.

Mary's journey to publication is the same as everyone’s except for a few geniuses out there who make it hard for all of us. And even they probably have an Ode to Roast Beef or two in their past.

Mary has signed an exclusive contract with Barbour that will have her writing eighteen (18) books for them over the next four years! This book is the first in the Montana Marriage Series. The second book will be the Husband Tree, and the third will be Wildflower Bride



ABOUT THE BOOK


Fire up your love of romance with Montana Rose.

When surrounded by a mob of ill-bred, foul-smelling, women-hungry men, the newly widowed and seemingly spoiled Cassie “China Doll” Griffin has no choice. Marrying handyman Red Dawson seems the only alternative to Cassie’s being hitched to a brutal rancher. But can this “China doll” bear exchanging smooth silk for coarse calico? Red was reluctant to be yoked to an unbeliever, but sometimes a man has no choice. Will Red change Cassie’s heart by changing her name? Wade Sawyer is obsessed with saving Cassie from a marriage of convenience. How far will he go to make her his own?

To read the first chapter of Montana Rose, click HERE.