Keep a little secret

All the elements that keep Garlock's fans coming back for more are here in a new story featuring Charlotte Tucker, whom readers met as a child in Stay a Little Longer (2010). A grown woman in 1939, Minnesotan Charlotte has accepted a teaching job in the small, rural, and friendly town of Sawyer, Missouri, where she will live on John Grant's enormous ranch. Charlotte meets the Wallace twins, Owen and Hannah, who are about her age and also fairly new to Grant's ranch. Hannah works at the bank in town and is warm and outgoing, while Owen, a ranch hand, seems her opposite. When their mother died, Owen swore he would find out the identity of the man who had impregnated and deserted her, leaving her to raise the twins in scandal and poverty. A stampede and a fire could spell disaster for the ranch, but were they accidents or intentional? Garlock is a master at developing characters through their actions and evoking settings so real they transport the reader back in time.--Tixier Herald, Diana Copyright 2010 Booklist

Slow and bland, this historical romance set in 1939 Oklahoma features moments of high tension, such as a wildfire and a stampede, that somehow manage to seem unremarkable. The romance between school teacher Charlotte Tucker and mysterious cowboy Owen Williams is set against a background of Depression-era ranches and has all the ingredients for eliciting interest, but the hazy language and vague historical details make it seem as faded and devoid of taste as an old photograph of a forgotten dessert. A rancher vowing revenge on Charlotte's host and a pair of twins searching for their long-lost father similarly fail to add much to the book. Garlock must have been tired when she wrote this book, which is a disappointing addition to the canon of an author who's produced some of the best contemporary historical fiction around. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.