NIGHT IN EDEN by Candice Proctor

By now everyone knows all about my blues over my favorite UBS closing. I picked up a few books there, but mostly shopped for family and friends and was able to use half my credit. I hope like hell they get the other store.

Anyway among the books I picked up for myself were Candice Proctor's NIGHT IN EDEN, SEPTEMBER MOON and THE LAST KNIGHT. Since I was in the mood for a historical, and my reading is always about what mood I'm in, I decided to read NIGHT IN EDEN first because both Tara Marie and ReneeW had commented recently how much they liked the book.

Here's the blurb from Ms. Proctor's web site:

Bryony Wentworth's life is shattered when she is convicted of manslaughter and transported to New South Wales in 1808. Sentenced to indentured servitude, she is given to Hayden St. John. A hard, embittered man left with an infant son by the death of his gentle wife, Hayden has little but contempt for the muddy, vermin-ridden convict on whom he must rely. But Bryony is a survivor. As they journey through the outback to Hayden's rugged station, Bryony rediscovers her own strength even as Hayden finds his salvation and rebirth in a love as forbidden and dangerous as the land that surrounds them.

I'm so glad I read this book. This was a good historical in the best sense of the word. There is alot of depth and layers to the book. There's nothing more rewarding for me in a book than when an author knows the period well. I enjoy the small things and details that add so much color and texture to the story. I don't want to give the impression the book is burdened or slow by this because it isn't. Both Byrony and Hayden are well drawn and true to the time period without being stereotypes.

So many times in historicals I cringe when the heroine makes a TSTL move or seems to act totally out of the time period, place or the character we've been shown already. It happens so frequently in historicals that at several points in this story I was waiting for this to occur. Thankfully it never does. It was refreshing to see Byrony and Hayden actually communicate with one another and have the author avoid the plot device of one or another of them hiding or avoiding the truth to create a twist.

Ms. Proctor has plenty of sexual tension between these two and doesn't take any easy roads for them to be together. It was great to see she had plenty of twists and turns without having these two intelligent and resilient people be unable to have a rational conversation between them.

I sure am glad I was able to find this book.

It was originally published in 1997, but it is worth the search to read it.