What the Heart Knows by Kath­leen Eagle fea­tures one of my least favorite themes in romance: the secret baby. Yet, it fea­tures a sec­ondary theme that is a favorite of mine: the younger man/older woman theme. There’s a ter­tiary theme of reunited love now that think of it.  You don’t have to worry about the secret baby theme in this book being the usual cliché stuff you see on book­shelf stores today. This author han­dles things just a bit dif­fer­ently. In fact the secret baby theme isn’t even the focus of this book.  Kath­leen Eagle is one of my favorite sto­ry­tellers for con­tem­po­rary romance. I’d say about four or five of her books sit on my keeper shelf. Here is the snynop­sis for you:

Helen Ket­ter­ling thought she had left the Bad River Sioux Reser­va­tion in South Dakota behind her thir­teen years ago. Once an ide­al­is­tic and spir­ited school­teacher, Helen was swept into the lives of the Sioux peo­ple and the arms of Reese Blue Sky. These fiery oppo­sites attracted with such heat that their love burned brightly–if all too briefly.

Now a sin­gle par­ent with a son–a son Reese knows noth­ing about–Helen accepts an assign­ment that brings her back to Bad River and into the realm of the one man she can­not forget.

A fam­ily tragedy has brought Reese home to Bad River. And though it has been years since he has seen Helen, Reese imme­di­ately recalls the bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ries of a time when he was very much in love. Now the pas­sion he felt for Helen has been rekin­dled but he senses in her a secret that she will not–or cannot–share with him. Soon, Reese dis­cov­ers that the life on the reser­va­tion he dearly cher­ished appears to have been threat­ened. In a world where tra­di­tion and rit­ual face off against devel­op­ment and greed, a proud but lonely man attempts to rec­on­cile his past, hop­ing to find his place in the heart of his one true love.

The romance in here is really nice. I’ve reread this book maybe a thou­sand times and still enjoy it. Solid char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, great dia­logue or should I say trade­mark, Eagle dia­logue where her sex­ual ban­ter is as hot as any love scene. Reese is a lov­able guy. The rea­son why I enjoy Eagle so much is that she writes char­ac­ters who actu­ally com­mu­ni­cate with each other. They also act with some com­mon sense and act respon­si­bly. Ms. Eagle writes about or cre­ated char­ac­ters that are akin to the Lakota Sioux because her hus­band is Lakota Sioux. She’s often taken her husband’s her­itage and cul­ture and has cre­ated sto­ries that are mem­o­rable as well as entertaining.  Anyway, this is another golden oldie that was pub­lished in 1999. The golden era of romance it seems. My grade for this won­der­ful novel, B+. This author has given me plenty of sleep­less nights read­ing her sto­ries. Check her out at the used book­store while her books are still available.