Love's First Bloom

This week, the


Christian Fiction Blog Alliance


is introducing


Love's First Bloom


Bethany House; Original edition (September 1, 2010)


by Delia Parr





ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Delia Parr, pen name for Mary Lechleidner, is the author of 10 historical novels and the winner of several awards, including the Laurel Wreath Award for Historical Romance and the Aspen Gold Award for Best Inspirational Book. She is a full-time high school teacher who spends her summer vacations writing and kayaking. The mother of three grown children, she lives in Collingswood, New Jersey.









ABOUT THE BOOK

Ruth Livingstone's life changes drastically the day her father puts a young child in her arms and sends her to a small village in New Jersey under an assumed name. There Ruth pretends to be a widow and quietly secludes herself until her father is acquitted of a crime.



But with the emergence of the penny press, the imagination of the reading public is stirred, and her father's trial stands center stage. Asher Tripp is the brash newspaperman who determines that this case is the event he can use to redeem himself as a journalist.



Ruth finds solace tending a garden along the banks of the Toms River--a place where she can find a measure of peace in the midst of the sorrow that continues to build. It is also here that Asher Tripp finds a temporary residence, all in an attempt to discover if the lovely creature known as Widow Malloy is truly Ruth Livingstone, the woman every newspaper has been looking for.



Love begins to slowly bloom...but is the affection they share strong enough to withstand the secrets that separate them?



If you would like to read the first chapter of Love's First Bloom, go HERE.

Love's First Bloom by Delia Parr is a historical romance filled with many twists. Ruth Livingstone's father is a pastor in New York, well-known for his work getting prostitutes to turn to Jesus. When he is accused of murdering one of them, he forces Ruth to take the prostitute's secret toddler daughter, Lily, and take on the identity of a woman in his program to protect the child while he is tried for the crime. Ruth moves to New Jersey and lives with a family who takes in former prostitutes trying to make a new life for themselves, but not long after she disappears, the press takes note of her absence and accuses her father of murdering her as well. The hunt is on by all of the major newspapers to find Ruth, including Jake Tripp who wants to redeem himself as a journalist after making a terrible mistake two years ago and nearly destroying the newspaper he owns with his brother, Clifford. Clifford gives Jake an assignment that will give him redemption: find Ruth Livingstone and get the real story behind the prostitute's murder. He moves to the same small New Jersey town Ruth is staying in and takes on a false identity to gain her trust but instead finds himself falling for the young woman who has been forced to live away from her father and pretend to be something she's not. I had a hard time believing that a pastor would do this to his daughter, it just seemed unbelievable to me, but when I swallowed my disbelief, other events continued to be forced by the plot: a unexpected death, a letter from beyond exposing a long-lost child, and the identity of the killer both made me go "what??" Parr's previous book, Heart's Awakening was a beautiful and poignant historical romance. This one had some great characters, but they were at the mercy of a far-fetched plot that did them no favors.

Hearts Awakening

This weather is pretty miserable for my rheumatoid arthritis. Whenever it's too cold or too wet, my joints ache. I can often feel the rain coming a day or two before it actually hits, sometimes I think I'd make a pretty good meteorologist. My hips and knees have been hurting all week, but this morning I woke up at 3:45 from the excruciating pain, and it's been nagging me since then. I don't often use the word hate, but I really do hate this illness. I'm praying for the rain to let up and the beautiful weather we had at the end of May to return so that I can get back to living my life.

Hearts Awakening by Delia Parr is a very unusual entry in Christian fiction, Ellie Kilmer knows that her dreams of having a husband and raising children of her own will never come true. At thirty-one, with an extremely plain face, she's placed her faith in God that she will find a life that will make her content. Jackson Smith has a proposition that just may fit the bill. He needs a housekeeper and caretaker for his two sons while he cares for the apple orchard on the family island just outside of town, but after just a few days, he realizes that he needs a more permanent position and proposes a marriage of convenience. Jackson is haunted by the scandal of his first wife's death, as well as by the memory of his one true love, and his suspicious nature threatens their business arrangement, but Ellie's strong faith and loving heart just may change both of their hearts. Most romance novels spend plenty of words gushing about the heroine's beauty, and the hero is often head over heels in love from the first glance. Ellie doesn't have that advantage, yet she is a heroine readers will fall in love with from the first page. Fiercely loyal and faithful, she has an beautiful heart. Parr has written a stellar romance that is truly of the heart and raises, through Jackson, the question of what true love really is.

Thank you to Bethany House Publishers for providing me with a copy of this book for review.