A GENTLE RAIN by Deborah Smith

Before this quickie review, I must apologize about its brevity. I have a thundering bad headache and I wanted to get something about the book posted, so mea culpa.

Deborah Smith does not write the same book twice. What she does very well is get her hooks into you and then just doesn't let go. You find yourself invested, interested and sometimes riveted by her stories. I'm struck with the industriousness of her characters. She rarely has time or room for a lazy slacker in her stories. Her characters may not lead big lives but they certainly have full ones. There is always so much heart and life to her characters. A GENTLE RAIN is no exception. As I read it I was immersed in her characters pain and joys deeply. They felt real and knowable.

In A GENTLE RAIN we have Ben, the tough Florida cowboy with an unusual and motley group of people who help him run his cattle ranch, and Kara, who feels lost and orphaned at 32 when her parents die. Grief stricken Kara is stunned to find out her parents were not her parents after all. Rather than make the story about a search this is a tale about discovery. Finding her biological parents is not the journey Kara is on. Their location as part of the quasi-family Ben has formed on his ranch is never the mystery. Why and how it happened that she was adopted by the richy-rich Whittenburg family, raised in a rain forest and left extremely wealthy after their deaths is what this book is about.

While I loved this story and the characters...and I did...alternating between Kara and Ben's POV was at times distracting. When the individual narrations got lengthy I would sometimes forget who the "I" was. But this is a small quibble when balanced with the rest of the story.

While the plot is a familiar story Ms. Smith imbues it with a few quirks, twists, and lots of heart. A very enjoyable read for an autumn evening. I hope you'll try it.