THE WIND COMES SWEEPING

Author: Marcia Preston ISBN: 9780778326304 4/2009 FICTION Publisher: MIRA

"At my father's graveside on Killdeer Ridge, I promised J.B. two things, hoping to make up for all the ways I'd failed him. One of those things was to salvage what was left of Killdeer Ridge Ranch and keep it in the family. The other was to find his only heir and grandchild, the daughter I'd given away." Marik Youngblood left her father's Oklahoma ranch—and the child she gave up for adoption—intent on becoming an artist instead of a rancher. Her father's death brings her back to a failing cattle operation, a pile of debt and a haunting need to find the child she left behind. Leasing the land for wind towers solves one problem but creates another—the hostility of her neighbors, Burt and Lena Gurdman. Lena Gurdman may be poor and uneducated, with a husband who's quick to blame her for any perceived wrong, but she knows she and Marik have more in common than the property line between them. When the bones of an infant are uncovered on Killdeer Ridge Ranch, both Marik and Lena are left with questions about secrets they thought were buried long ago.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

I can’t praise THE WIND COMES SWEEPING highly enough. It is an example of expert storytelling at its best, bringing the past, present and future for two women straight to the reader’s heart.

The legend of Silk Mountain begins in 1895, with one young bride’s despondency and reaction to the incessant wind that crosses the plains. The times change but the feelings that long-ago woman endured, as well as the sweeping wind, remain constant in the lives of two present-day women. Marik returns to her roots, hoping to find closure as well as open the way for a satisfying future on her father’s ranch. She sees a way to financial stability in the form of wind turbines, but not all of her neighbors agree with her leasing the land to harness the power of the wind. She finds a dead eagle beneath one of the towers just as Jace Rainwater shows up early for a job interview. This seemingly random fact pulls them together and brings Jace’s secrets into an already simmering pot of hidden—and not-so-hidden—pieces of the lives that come together beneath the sweeping Oklahoma wind.

Wonderfully well-written and thought-provoking, THE WIND COMES SWEEPING is easily one of the best books I have read in a long time. It earns a spot on my keeper shelf, and Marcia Preston is an author whose upcoming work is eagerly awaited by this reader.

Kay James