Solomon Spring

by Michelle Black Narrated by Kris Faulkner

Overview

A child custody battle turns deadly on a windswept winter prairie in 1878. A man begins a quixotic search for lost love in an effort to mend his shattered life. A sacred Native American shrine is about to be defiled, but not if one determined woman can stop it. These three seemingly unrelated stories collide at the Solomon Springs natural wonder held sacred for centuries because of its legendary healing properties. Murder shatters the spiritual calm that is Solomon Spring. Seeking solace from the turbulent life she has led, Eden Murdoch returns to the Solomon Spring. The tranquility of this timeless place will soon be corrupted by a local businessman who plans to exploit the sacred waters of the Spring. Eden's earnest fight to prevent this sacrilege is interrupted by her own past. Brad Randall, her onetime lover, arrives with the astounding news that the infant son Eden lost fourteen years before has been located and is living nearby. The joy of her reunion with her son and with Brad, is clouded by the reappearance of her longestranged husband, Lawrence Murdoch, who seeks sole custody of the boy and of the prosperous ranch the boy will inherit from his adoptive father. The warring couple engage in a vicious battle, both legal and emotional, with an unexpectedly deadly outcome.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Credible and engaging characters, particularly the fearless and feisty heroine, Eden Murdoch, together with a well-paced, suspenseful plot, make for a fine historical adventure yarn in this sequel to Black's An Uncommon Enemy (2001). In Kansas in 1878, the Cheyenne are facing starvation since the Bureau of Indian Affairs has failed to send them the food the government promised. When Eden's true love, Brad Randall, who's the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, can't persuade his superiors to take action because of budget cuts, he decides to go West to see the situation for himself. Ironically, Eden, who hasn't seen Brad in years, heads for Washington to get his help to prevent a dastardly land developer from desecrating the Cheyenne's sacred spring, famous for its healing properties, by bottling the water and selling it. Eventually, their paths cross, but Eden runs into a major distraction-she learns that the infant son she presumed died years before in a Cheyenne raid on a wagon train has survived, raised by a local family. His late stepparents have left him a legacy, which her predatory ex-husband, Lawrence Murdoch, wants for himself. When Lawrence turns up in an alley with a bullet in the back of his head, Brad stands accused of his murder. Some mystery fans may be disappointed that the murder plot occupies only the book's last third, but other readers won't mind, finding too much else to enjoy. (Sept. 26) Forecast: An Uncommon Enemy was a pure historical novel. The publisher's effort to gain a wider readership by marketing the sequel, essentially a historical with a crime tacked on, to mystery fans should succeed, thanks to the book's storytelling verve. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Once upon a time in the West, Eden Murdoch and Brad Randall met and fell in love. But Eden was happily married to a Cheyenne medicine man, Hanging Road, and Randall, an officer in the Army, had a promising career and a wealthy fiancée waiting back East. Ten years later, in 1878, Eden’s life with the Cheyenne and Brad’s life as the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs have both fallen apart. In a minor example of Black’s providential approach to plotting, lightning from a clear blue sky strikes Hanging Road while, under the direction of Brad’s agency, the Cheyenne are relocated to reservations where they will starve. For the sake of her nine-year-old daughter, Eden returns to white society and homesteads in Kansas near Solomon Spring, a natural, and naturally sacred, spring. When the spring’s owner, that subtle villain Phineas Claypool, commercializes the site, Eden protests and lands in jail. Back east, Brad’s wife is having an affair, and the new Secretary of the Interior reveals that he has no sympathy for Indians. Virtuous Brad quits both wife and job and heads westward to tell Eden that her son, presumed dead, is alive and well. When Lawrence Murdoch, the boy’s father and Eden’s abusive first husband, turns up to claim the wealth of his son’s adoptive parents, someone shoots him, and Brad is arrested for his murder.

Black (An Uncommon Enemy, not reviewed) serves up a Western in which a beautiful, anachronistic heroine rises above American sexism, imperialism, capitalism, and racism, all so that she and her true love can be together.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169667806
Publisher:	Books in Motion
Publication date:	07/15/2013
Series:	Eden Murdoch , #2
Edition description:	Unabridged

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