DANCING IN THE RED SNOW - AUTHOR'S INSIGHTS

AT A GLANCE…

In this sequel to Almost Paradise, the horse woman that was the protagonist of that tale failed with a brash girl who abused her teen-aged son. The girl has become vengeful woman and the boy has moved on to marry his college sweetheart. They have a four-year-old-daughter and a contented life running the guest and cattle ranch his father left him in Nevada. The day the child disappears at the county fair, their lives are turned upside-down and eight years pass without a glimpse of what happened or a hope of ever seeing their child again. I always tell readers, “Don’t give up on this story.” The beginning will draw you in, the middle will stun you, and the ending will surprise you. One fan buys this novel to give to friends because of the ending.

AUTHOR'S INSIGHTS

In this sequel to Almost Paradise, Julian’s and Serena’s son, Hank, must battle alone the bitter humans that resisted the “lessons” and have gone off the deep end.       

Enter Liana! Hank is married now, to Susan Sun, an Iroquois woman he met in college. She, incidentally, has a small part in my first novel, Once to Every Man, as a child in a New Mexico orphanage. So the connections begin. (The time-line works; don’t fret trying to figure it out. It took me several sleepless nights and many sheets of paper that ended up looking like they’d been scribbled with math equations when I finally had to collate all the characters from the African and the American stories. If you find a discrepancy, don’t tell me!)      

Liana has felt betrayed by Hank and is bent on “exacting revenge” (her words.) She kidnaps his four-year-old daughter, Sunny, and keeps her for eight years. There is no “horse whisperer” to help with this, and after Sunny is found, reeling from the years of mental and physical abuse, she turns to the Catholic Church and an African priest (what else?), Father Azenwa, for answers. Her parents fear they have lost her again to the ritualistic Church, but Sunny’s path leads her to self-examination, to giving the gift of her spirit to others, and to facing the demented Liana again.                 

One of my dear readers said after finishing Dancing in the Red Snow, she’d be in the grocery store or on a walk and suddenly be in the novel with Sunny and Liana, feeling their struggle, and the rest of the world would fade away for a moment. She added that she couldn’t seem to resolve their pain in her own heart. (My best example of how real fiction can be, bless her!)   

PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN IN THE ACTUAL SETTINGS OF THIS NOVEL…