From the back cover:
Stormy love...
Wyoming Territory in 1869 was a rough place for a woman, and when Kate Murphy's husband died of cholera, she had no choice but to take a job keeping house for Jonathan Cantrell and his two unruly sons. Soon she found that this rancher with the face of an angel had the devil's own temper. But sweet, sensual Kate could match it with her own.
Living together in a small cabin on an isolated ranch, their clash of wills gave way to aching desire, despite the suspicion between them. Was their new love strong enough to overcome their secrets from the past?
And my review:
I read and enjoyed Carolyn Lampman's Meadowlark (Harper Monogram), so I decided to try out her other books. But I could not believe that MURPHY'S RAINBOW was written by the same author. While the plotting was good, there was no real emotional depth to the story, and the characters remained pretty flat throughout.
**Spoiler warning!**
The heroine endures a lot of tragedy in the novel, but it is resolved very quickly, and her sorrow is not really explored. Instead, if felt as if it was glossed over for the sake of moving the plot along.
For instance, her husband dies (she'd had a good marriage), she cries herself to sleep for one night, and that's it. The reader never really sees the wrenching pain a person would experience over the death of a beloved spouse. Similarily, the heroine later realizes she's pregnant with her late husband's child, then prompty loses it to a miscarriage. She's sad for three days, her native friend gives her a session in a sweat lodge, and BAM, she's fine again. If only! Having suffered two miscarriages myself, I can assure you that a woman does not get over the loss of a child that easily (if ever!) And considering that the heroine had lost what last piece she'd have of her husband, one would expect her to be devastated. If the author didn't want to have to deal with the baby, I don't think she should have written one in at all, if she wasn't prepared to properly portray the emotional devastation a woman suffers from pregnancy loss.
Since the author had the hero still agonizing over his wife's death (which had happened years before), I was annoyed that the heroine's loss of her husband (and the subsequent loss of his child) wasn't properly dealth with. I think that if the author had thinned out some of the subplots and extra characters and instead focused on the emotional potential of this novel, this would have been a really satisfying read.
I wouldn't recommend this book unless you are a big fan of the author. Try her novel MEADOWLARK instead; I think that was a better read.