The Road to Cardinal Valley
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4.5 • 19 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
In this heartwarming follow-up to Earlene Fowler’s national bestseller, The Saddlemaker’s Wife, Ruby McGavin returns to the small town of Cardinal, California, where a year ago she brought her husband’s ashes back to his family’s ranch, and discovered safety, peace, and love...
Back in Cardinal, Ruby is hoping the place and people who gave her so much can give her brother, Nash—who’s been drowning in drink in Nashville—the fresh start he so desperately needs.
Saddlemaker Lucas McGavin is thrilled that Ruby is back. He hasn’t given up on his love for her, despite the awkward fact that she’s his brother’s widow—and that this may be his last chance to win Ruby’s heart.
When Nash starts drinking again and has a devastating accident, Ruby seeks out their estranged mother to help with an intervention, not realizing that Etta Walker harbors a horrible secret that keeps her from reconnecting with the children she deserted so many years ago.
As Ruby, Lucas, and Etta struggle with the present and confront the past, they each learn the power of forgiveness…and reach for a new future filled with hope, grace, and love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of Fowler's Benni Harper mystery series will welcome this likable sequel to The Saddlemaker's Wife (2006), which follows troubled but mainly goodhearted characters in Cardinal, Calif., a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Lucas McGavin is restlessly looking for a profession or a woman he can commit to, in particular gentle Ruby McGavin, who's still hung up on her dead husband, Lucas's brother. In addition, Ruby is terribly worried about whether Nash, her own younger brother, can stay off liquor and drugs. None of what happens with these characters or the vividly drawn supporting cast is earthshaking, but together the events make up an appealing panorama of ordinary people trying to live up to their best potential if they can figure out what it might be. Fowler demonstrates that such a story can be religious without being sanctimonious, though outrageous authorial manipulation at the conclusion weakens the effect.
