Reason to Believe

Kath­leen Eagle is one of my very favorite con­tem­po­rary romance writ­ers. One might say she is a nat­ural born sto­ry­teller. Her sto­ries have kept me up late at night. Rea­son To Believe is no excep­tion. It’s a story of a mar­riage in trou­ble which is one of my favorite themes. The story is described this way:

Young lovers from starkly dif­fer­ent lives and worlds, Clara and Ben Pipe­stone came together in pas­sion and in ten­der­ness. But their mar­riage could not endure decep­tion — or the betray­als of a tor­mented, search­ing soul. And now, though time and pain have torn them apart, they reunite for the sake of their trou­bled teen-aged daugh­ter — embark­ing upon a rugged win­ter jour­ney across sacred land in sym­bolic remem­brance of Ben’s Lakota ances­tors … and to reclaim some­thing beau­ti­ful but lost — and as eter­nal as the stars.

Ben Pipe­stone is a recov­er­ing alco­holic who has lost his fam­ily. He stays alone in a soli­tary shack and works for his father. A loner try­ing to get his life back together. These days, Ben is being redemp­tive and try­ing his best to reclaim his life and the peo­ple he loved most: his daugh­ter Anna and his ex-wife, Clara.

Clara Pipe­stone is try­ing to raise her daugh­ter alone but is find­ing that task a chal­lenge. Her teen-aged daugh­ter is get­ting into trou­ble and start­ing to mimic her father’s prob­lem with alco­hol among other things. As a last resort, Clara reaches out to Ben for help. The two have been some­what estranged for two years. Hurt feel­ings sur­face along with anger and regret. How­ever, oppor­tu­nity arises and gives Ben a shot at a sec­ond chance.

There’s a com­mem­o­ra­tive trail ride to Wounded Knee that Ben takes his fam­ily on. Ben is Lakota Sioux and his father is the spir­i­tual elder; Clara along with their daugh­ter go on the trip that marked the mas­sacre of Chief Big Foot’s peo­ple in Decem­ber 1890 .  The author goes into the past just a bit to show the begin­ning of Ben and Clara’s rela­tion­ship and the trou­bles that came later. The two come from vastly dif­fer­ent worlds.  Clara is a mid­dle class white woman who first meets Ben while inter­view­ing his father. Clara keeps com­ing back to the reser­va­tion and even­tu­ally she is won over by Ben’s charm. Clara falls hard for Ben and the two even­tu­ally marry. Then the dark part comes later with Ben’s drink­ing and out of con­trol behav­ior that even­tu­ally destroys the marriage.

Kath­leen Eagle deliv­ers her trade­mark story telling along with her sexy, sexual ban­ter that often that can get quite heated. Eagle writes great chem­istry and her story is one of redemp­tion and sec­ond chances. The redemp­tive jour­ney and even­tual end­ing may have been a bit too neat in the end but this is fic­tion after all. The author has rarely dis­ap­pointed me. Her sto­ries are more true to life than most con­tem­po­rary romances today. Reason To Believe is a story that you won’t soon for­get and one that I highly rec­om­mend. What dif­fer­en­ci­ates Eagle’s sto­ries from the rest is that she’s not afraid to tackle some tough issues. So. Next time your in the used book­store, give this book a try. You won’t regret it. And if you do, don’t tell me about it. This was a keeper for me.