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TERESA DIGS UP SOME BURIED TREASURE ON A LAZY SATURDAY MORNING

I have to start this blog by admitting that I'm an idiot. At least 3 years ago, lovely and wise Avon author Christie Ridgway gave me a glowing recommendation for a trade paperback called THE SECOND COMING OF LUCY HATCH by Marsha Moyer. Christie glowed SO brightly about this book that I wisely went out and bought not only LUCY HATCH but it's companion novel THE LAST OF THE HONKY TONK ANGELS. So why am I an idiot, you ask? Because I let the book languish on my bookshelf for 3 years before finally picking it up to take on a long plane trip last week.

Lucy Hatch's second coming begins with the first line of the novel: I was thirty-three years old when my husband walked out into the field one morning and never came back and I went in one quick leap from wife to widow. At 19, Lucy had wed a taciturn, stoic 27-year-old farmer, believing that still waters run deep only to discover that sometimes still waters only run...well...still. For fourteen years, they were the kind of couple who had an abiding respect for each other but who rarely spoke and only made love with the lights off. Lucy sincerely grieves Mitchell when he dies but perhaps her greatest grief comes from admitting to herself that she also feels a tiny smidgen of relief.

Texas is in the very bones of this book and the grieving Lucy retreats to her hometown of Mooney, Texas to try to find the girl she lost all those years ago. As Lucy sets out to rediscover herself in a little ramshackle rental house out in the country, her family rallies around her: Aunt Dove, her "spinster aunt" and the wisest of the lot, her good looking brother Bailey, her slightly plus-sized and plus-hearted sister-in-law Geneva.

It's Bailey and Geneva who drag Lucy out of that rental house and back to her favorite teenage haunt--the local honky tonk, the Round-Up. That's where she comes face-to-face with town bad boy Ash Farrell. Ah, Ash Farrell! (Insert swooning sigh here). Although he's not a cowboy, Ash is a "cowboy hero" in the best sense of the tradition. He's a lean, tall drink of water--a carpenter (who knows how to use his hands!) by day and a singer who performs every Friday night down at the Round-Up. Women line up at the bar to vie for his attentions after each performance but the minute he sees Lucy, he "sets his sights on her." He brings her flowers, he brings her a puppy, he fixes her leaky pipes. (And no--that's not a metaphor!) His courtship and her initial resistance set every tongue in Mooney wagging.

Marsha Moyer is a master at both dialogue and characterization. I think I first fell in love with Ash when he was telling Lucy about the steeple at the local Baptist Church:


"Reverend Honeywell's got a couple of spotlights trained on it at night now," Ash said. "In case, I guess, Jesus decides to come back at two in the morning and can't see to land."

When we learn that Ash went into foster care at the age of four when they found him all alone in the house with his mentally ill mother, "sitting in the closet eating dog biscuits right out of the box," I'm ready to hand him both my house keys and my panties.

You often hear romance readers whining about how hard it is to create unique love scenes after they've written several books. Their hero and heroine have done it in the rocking chair. They've swung from the chandelier. There can't possibly be any new words left to describe how to put Tab A into Slot B, can there? After reading this book, I'm happy to discover that there are. The love scenes in this book are infused with emotion and helped to remind me that it's not the mechanics that need refreshing but the language used to describe them:

So I let myself slide under again, my mind floating somewhere between dark and light, aware of nothing but my skin under his thickened fingertips, the silken grit of his unshaved chin as it grazed behind my ears, the curve of my throat, the hollow of my collarbone. The quilt had fallen to the floor, and my nightgown worked itself into a tangle at my hips as I felt him move down over me, kissing and kissing, creating a smooth, undulating purl of response from my head to my toes.

As irresistible as Ash is, it's Lucy's voice--wry, funny, and unflinchingly honest--that truly propels the story. When her brother Bailey tells her, "I just want you to be safe is all," Lucy replies with, "My husband got chewed up by a farm machine. Safe is a word that's gone straight out of my vocabulary."


THE SECOND COMING OF LUCY HATCH is both a beautifully written novel and a fine romance. There are very few books that capture the true joy and terror of falling in love and this is one of the best I've ever read. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pull Marsha Moyer's second book, THE LAST OF THE HONKY TONK ANGELS, straight off my shelf before my IQ drops even lower.

Judging from the number of glowing 5-star reviews on Amazon, I'm not the only one to discover LUCY HATCH. But what about you? Do you have a "buried treasure" book to recommend? A book that you adore but the world ignored? What's the best book you ever read that no one else seems to have heard of?

J.R. Ward's LOVER AWAKENED is currently #12 on the New York Times bestseller list and #3 on the USA Today list. You can visit her website at: www.jrward.com

I’m sitting here at my kitchen table with an unnamed friend and we’re arguing about the names in The Black Dagger Brotherhood. Unnamed says that Zsadist and Phury and Vishous, names that suggest real words (sadist, fury, and vicious) drag her out of an incredibly powerful story and are too literal. Unnamed says she prefers more subtlety. I say, “Honey, these guys are sadists, furious and vicious. It works for me!”

I love it when I’m right.

Because JR Ward has created the intricate world of Zsadist, a former blood slave, who loves a vampire aristocrat and will do anything to free her from the bad guys who have captured her. He can’t love her; his memories never release him from the old pain and humiliation … yet what must he do for a woman who’s faced the kind of torture and anguish only he can understand?

In the Black Dagger Brotherhood, the vampires are alpha heroes who search out their females and will do anything to protect them. The bad guys are lesser, soulless beings who lose everything, even the color of their hair, in their quest to serve evil. There’s a sense of cosmic planning — this is no small struggle, but the eternal brawl between good and evil. JR Ward has, from the very first book, has created a fully realized underworld of darkly erotic vampire and the lessers, and at the same time makes us deeply care about each vampire’s individual story.

I don’t want to give away any of the LOVER AWAKENED plot — the twists and turns of the story are so exciting I couldn’t the book down, and I want you to experience the same please.

So you know what? Unnamed and I are both right, because Unnamed and I both finished LOVER AWAKENED in record time. Whether you like the names or dislike the names doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the Black Dagger Brotherhood books grab you, grip you and shake you until you can’t think of anything else.

JR has promised to come in and discuss LOVER AWAKENED with us, and she’s donating autographed copies of each of the first three books to one lucky winner picked from our mailing list. So … if you have a comment or a question for JR Ward, now’s your chance. Talk to you, ask her question, and tell you how much you love her books — because heaven knows, I love them.

And so does Unnamed.

I devoured all of Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Whimsey mysteries and while Barbara Cleverly (and you have got to love the name!) isn’t Dorothy Sayers (who is?) she’s writing about the same era and her protagonist, Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands, is of the same class. It’s about here that the paths diverge. Peter did his snooping in England, Joe Sandilands investigates crime occurring in India during the period of the Raj.


Cleverly does a fabulous job of sucking you into the often claustrophobic, class-conscious, and insular scoiety of the English expansionists. The world she brings to life describes two cultures living parallel to one another, as oddly interdependent as they are segregated. When they do intersect, it cannot help but result in tragedy.

I love the conceit of the book: the ragtime atmosphere transported to the exotic realms of the Raj, the English upper classes desperation to hold on to a way of life World War One saw obliterated, the heroism and/or knavery of the young soldiers. Oh, and the mystery is pretty good, too.

Joe Sandilands, about to be discharged and sent home to London, is given one last duty at an English army outpost: find out if there is anything more than coincidence in the string of deaths that have claimed the lives of five officers' wives over the course of a dozen years. Of course, there is—there wouldn’t have been a mystery otherwise, but in true Sayers fashion, the motives make the story.

Cleverly doesn’t cheat. She seeds the clues throughout the book and if her characterizations are a little broad, her story telling is crisp, fast-paced and toothsome in the best Sayers sense of the word. I can hear the English accents, the trill of laughter, feel the ennui of the jazz babies doing their best to recreate cool London nightlife in the stifling Indian heat and experience the ominous threat that stalks them.

The Last Kashmiri Rose is the first in what is currently a five books series. I’m heading to the store to pick up the next.

In 1972, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss did what every writer dreams of doing—she wrote a classic novel with her very first book.  The Flame and the Flower had it all—passion, conflict, adventure, drama, a setting that sweeps us from Georgian England to a plantation in the Carolinas, and unforgettable characters.  She broke all the conventional rules of historical fiction by making the sexual relationship between her hero and heroine a vital component of their emotional relationship and in doing so, gave birth to the modern genre of the historical romance.

I was ten years old when The Flame and the Flower was first published, fifteen the first time I read it.  Although I read it numerous times after that, I hadn’t picked it up in years.  So when I started re-reading the book a few months ago, I told myself I’d treat it like an assignment and just read for an hour at a time.  The prose was denser and much more detailed than what we’ve become accustomed to, but after only a few pages, I found myself thoroughly captivated.  Before I knew it, three hours had passed and I still couldn’t bear to put the book down.  Thirty years after it’s publication, The Flame and the Flower is still a deliciously readable novel, a quality it shares with another timeless classic, Gone with the Wind.

I was also struck all over again by what a fine writer Kathleen E. Woodiwiss is.  To enter her world is to enter a time machine that transports you back to 1799, where Heather Simmons, our Georgian Cinderella, is being held captive by her aunt’s cruelty until sea captain Brandon Birmingham comes storming into her life to sweep her away.  Although Woodiwiss’s descriptions are lush and detailed, her prose is never purple.  By setting her own standards so high, Woodiwiss challenged every romance writer who came after her to strive for excellence in their craft. 

One of the criteria of an enduring classic is that it should be the first to do something, and in The Flame and the Flower, Woodiwiss succeeds on every count.  So many of her innovations would go on to become the bedrock conventions upon which the historical romance genre would be grounded.  Although her settings and secondary characters are vividly drawn, the relationship between Heather and Brandon always remains at the core of the plot.  Many scenes that might seem clichéd now were sparkling and new thirty years ago:  the heroine assisting the hero with his bath; the hero walking in on the heroine as she bathes; the hero nursing the heroine through a near fatal illness caused by his own insensitivity.  Woodiwiss gives the hero a loveable wise-quipping brother, a loyal manservant, and a witchy ex-fiancée.  Every man who meets Heather falls a little bit in love with her and in an eerily prescient twist, there’s even a suspense sub-plot involving a brutal killer that drives the book to a heart-jolting climax. 

Although less politically correct then some would prefer, the book is probably more historically accurate than many of the romances written today where all the young misses are feisty and all the gents are enlightened as to the rights of women.  Yes, seventeen-year-old Heather is essentially a passive victim in the beginning and thirty-five-year-old Brandon is perfectly capable of being an arrogant jerk, but they both fulfill that essential criteria of good fiction—they experience personal growth and transformation during the course of the story.  Heather finds her spirit while Brandon loses his heart. 

You can’t discuss this book or Heather and Brandon’s first sexual encounter without waging the same debate that’s been raging ever since Rhett carried a resisting Scarlet up those long, winding stairs in Gone with the Wind.  The controversy arises when, during their first meeting, a drunken Brandon mistakes Heather for a wharf prostitute.  Both her explanations and her struggles are so weak and ineffectual that one can almost forgive him the mistake.  He’s quite remorseful when he realizes he’s deflowered an innocent, but that doesn’t stop him from taking her once more before she makes her escape.  Is this shocking and wicked?  Oh yes!  But still stirring in this era where our deepest and most primal sexual fantasies have been sanitized and the definition of “feminism” seems to be have been extended to the area of censoring other women’s fantasies.  When Brandon tells Heather, “I’ve found with you, sweet, that when I want you badly enough I can overlook being a gentleman,” my heart beats a little faster as I imagine him with the devilish glint of a marauding Errol Flynn or Clark Gable in his eye. 

This is no forced seduction where Heather is made to experience pleasure against her will.  Woodiwiss never once glamorizes rape.  Heather despises it the two times Brandon has his way with her when she is resistive.  It’s not until he learns to show her tenderness and consideration after a lo-o-o-o-ong period of enforced abstinence that she comes to enjoy their lovemaking.

The scene that fueled my own adolescent fantasies is the one where Brandon first learns that Heather is carrying his child.  After her vicious aunt slaps her and rips her ragged dress from her body, revealing her pregnant nakedness to everyone in the room, Brandon comes storming out of the shadows and sweeps his cloak around her.  In that one thrilling and protective gesture, we see a shadow of the hero he will become.

Although Brandon can be a bit of a bully when crossed, from the very beginning of the novel he demonstrates a capacity for humor and irresistible kindness.  He resents being forced into marriage, yet he buys Heather beautiful clothes, covers her when she is cold, has a tub brought on board his ship because he knows she cherishes her baths, and orders a special pair of long johns made to help her endure the bitter winter weather at sea.  He also fulfills another crucial female fantasy that would go on to become a staple of our genre—once he lays eyes on Heather, he never wants or touches another woman.

Since The Flame and the Flower gave women their first chance to read about sex outside of the context of male pornography, I was amazed to realize how few sex scenes there actually are in the book.  After Heather and Brandon’s initial encounter, they don’t make love again until near the very end of the novel.  During the long sea voyage, we watch them slowly becoming husband and wife—denying each other sexual comforts, yet strengthening their emotional bond.  We enjoy the vicarious thrill of watching them fall in love, not just in lust.  By the end of the book, you actually believe that these two could build a happy life together—built not only on physical attraction, but on mutual respect and love.

While Brandon is becoming a hero worth having, Heather completes her own satisfying personal journey.  Her fiery confrontations with her husband don’t defeat her, but strengthen her.  No longer a passive victim, late in the book she even vanquishes a lecherous villain.  A fuming Brandon arrives, but Heather no longer needs him to rescue her.  She has completed her journey from girl to woman and is now fully his equal and his match.

Both the power and pleasure of The Flame and the Flower are rooted in its retelling of the primal myths that reside in our collective unconsciousness.  In the snippet of poetry that prefaces the book, it is not the flame that consumes the flower, but the flower that triumphs by re-emerging after being scorched by the flame.  Kathleen E. Woodiwiss didn’t just understand the “Beauty and the Beast” mythology on an intellectual level.  She internalized it to such a degree that it infuses every word of both this story and her follow-up classic, The Wolf and the Dove.

And in Brandon Birmingham, Woodiwiss delivers a beast worthy of the taming.  In recent years there has been a tendency for romance writers to “defang” their beasts much too early in our stories.  We’re so determined to make our protagonists “heroic” from the very first page (possibly to stave off criticism of the ultra-Alpha male?) that there’s very little room left for the personal growth that makes this book so satisfying and enduring.

And it is enduring.  144 reader reviews on Amazon.com prove that.  As I scrolled through them, I was amazed by how many of them were written by girls who were around the same age I was when I first discovered the book.  It seemed these young women could relate to both Heather’s age and her coming-of-age journey during the story.  Perhaps the best way to win a romance reader’s heart for life is to win it while it’s still young and tender.

Whether you love The Flame and the Flower or hate it, we’re still talking about it thirty years later.  How many other romances will be able to make that claim?  As I turned the last page of the book with a wistful sigh, I was humbled all over again by what a tremendous debt of gratitude we all owe Kathleen E. Woodiwiss.  Brandon Birmingham and Heather Simmons are truly the grandparents of all the historical heroes and heroines who came after them.  At the end of the book, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss shouldn’t have written The End, but The Beginning. 

How many of you discovered romance with THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER and THE WOLF AND THE DOVE?  Are you able to read the books within the context of their historical time period and the time they were written or do you think they’re too politically incorrect for the current romance market?