This week, theChristian Fiction Blog Allianceis introducing Montana RoseBarbour Publishing, Inc (July 1, 2009)byMary ConnealyBUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR BLOGGER: Mary Connealy is a fun read, with humor, sensitivity, suspense, action, and apparently authentic, western flavor.
Montana Rose offers all of the above, along with a mystery, for no extra charge: Who the
heck is Montana Rose? We kept expecting one of the babies born during the saga to be christened "Rose," but it never happened.
As the pages dwindled and the adventure kept developing, we feared the worst possible outcome, a cliffhanger. In the end, however, our fears were assuaged, as Wade the bad guy ... oops, almost spoiled it.
Though, at first, Connealy's narrative seemed a little stilted, as if learning to love her characters took some time, we quickly came under the spell of Connealy's easy prose and her well-cast characters. Indeed, early in the story they ceased to be simply characters, as we fell head-over-heals in love with even the prickly, self-sufficient woman rancher, Bell.
Nancy and I highly recommend
Montana Rose for an easy, entertaining read from a solid, Biblical world view. Enjoy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mary's writing journey is similar to a lot of others. Boil it down to persistence, oh, go ahead and call it stubbornness. She just kept typing away. She think the reason she did it was because she was more or less a dunce around people—prone to sit silently when she really ought to speak up(or far worse, speak up when she ought to sit silently).
So, Mary had all these things, she want to say, in her head; the perfect zinger to the rude cashier, which you think of an hour after you’ve left the store, the perfect bit of wisdom when someone needs help, which doesn’t occur to you until they solve their problems themselves, the perfect guilt trip for the kids, which you don’t say because you’re not an idiot. She keep all this wit to herself, much to the relief of all who know her, and then wrote all her great ideas into books. It’s therapeutic if nothing else, and more affordable than a psychiatrist.
So then a very nice, oh so nice publishing company like Barbour Heartsong comes along and says, “Hey, we’ll pay you money for this 45,000 word therapy session.” That’s as sweet as it gets.
Mary's journey to publication is the same as everyone’s except for a few geniuses out there who make it hard for all of us. And even they probably have an Ode to Roast Beef or two in their past.
Mary has signed an exclusive contract with Barbour that will have her writing eighteen (18) books for them over the next four years! This book is the first in the Montana Marriage Series. The second book will be the
Husband Tree, and the third will be
Wildflower BrideABOUT THE BOOK
Fire up your love of romance with Montana Rose. When surrounded by a mob of ill-bred, foul-smelling, women-hungry men, the newly widowed and seemingly spoiled Cassie “China Doll” Griffin has no choice. Marrying handyman Red Dawson seems the only alternative to Cassie’s being hitched to a brutal rancher. But can this “China doll” bear exchanging smooth silk for coarse calico? Red was reluctant to be yoked to an unbeliever, but sometimes a man has no choice. Will Red change Cassie’s heart by changing her name? Wade Sawyer is obsessed with saving Cassie from a marriage of convenience. How far will he go make her his own?
If you would like to read the first chapter of
Montana Rose, go
HERE
Rita Gerlach has published three historical novels plus articles in Writers Gazette, Write to Inspire, Will Write 4 Food, and The Christian Communicator. 
Seth Braxton, a patriot of the American Revolution, unexpectedly inherits his loyalist grandfather's estate in England. Seth is torn between the land he fought for and the prospect of reuniting with his sister Caroline, who was a motherless child taken to England at the onset of the war. 
