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How do YOU rate this book? In 1955 Tyler Carson celebrates her thirtieth birthday by ending a two-year, going-nowhere love affair. She is determined that from this day forward to live life on her own terms. Then the return of old love and the upheaval of social change converge to cast a long shadow of doubt across her firm resolve.
Grant Madison, military man and son of the town’s most revered citizen is home after many years of serving in the army in Europe and Korea. So many challenges await him: The care and rearing of his ten-year-old niece, learning a new trade; adjusting once more to a way of life that seems, after all this time, alien and outmoded. But his biggest challenge is facing and working with the unorthodox and fiery tempered Tyler Carson, the woman he had loved and left six years before.
EXCERPT
Tyler held the screen open for him. "You can put your bags in the living room." She followed him inside and closed the door. "I'm afraid you'll have to sleep on the couch."
Grant dropped his bags beside Tom's platform rocker. "I don't mind."
"You can put Amy's bags in my bedroom. It's down the hall, first door on the left."
Grant knew where Tyler's room was and she knew he knew. "I remember." How could he forget? That room was the place they'd first made love. Even now the memory of that steamy August afternoon was enough to make his throat constrict and his body tighten.
As he carried bags down the hall, Tyler called after him, "Wash up in the bathroom then come to supper."
Grant nudged the door open with his foot and went inside. The room had changed since he'd been a frequent visitor. The fluffy white curtains had been replaced by lime green drapes. The chenille bedspread with all the flowers was gone. In its place was a striped tailored coverlet. The deep-piled sea green throw rugs had disappeared. The floor was bare. The bookshelf in the corner was the only familiar sight. It held an array of books, papers, and magazines.
He put the bags on the floor, sat on the edge of the bed and dropped his head into his hands as depression deepened to despair. The two people he loved most in the world were gone. His father had passed on. Tyler had moved on. His head came up. He couldn't call his father back. He could honor his father's memory by making a home for Amy and by being the kind of man his father had always believed he could be.
Tyler Carson was another matter. After all she had meant to him and all she had done to him, how could she treat him as if he were a stranger? It's as easy as walking out the door and never looking back. He didn't need -- besides all his other problems -- an overactive nagging conscience. How could she? How could I? He was asking questions, and they were questions he couldn't answer.
Grant pushed himself to his feet. During the first years after he'd gone away, he'd tried to eradicate Tyler's memory in the only way he knew how, by making love to other women, many other women. Each encounter began with the same charade: The woman in his arms was Tyler. He could close his eyes and pretend that it was her sweet body he was caressing, these were her soft lips he was kissing, and her secret hollow he was entering. Then, somewhere between commencement and culmination, passion and physical need replaced sense with the sensation that led to momentary oblivion. The aftermath brought, over and over again, the same sad scenario. He came away from each encounter feeling cheap, betrayed and unfulfilled. After a while he forced himself to admit that the pain outweighed the pleasure and his promiscuity stopped.
The knot in Grant's gut tightened. Since his ego wouldn't let him claim blame for his own folly, he put the responsibility squarely on the slim shoulders of the woman who had sent her ghost to follow him to the ends of the earth and back again. It's Tyler's fault. Damn her. He made his way down the hall toward the bathroom.
"This is an unusual book. It is a historical romance, set in 1955, but it is so much more. This book is an in-depth reminder of the Civil Rights actions which still affect us today. This book dealt with conflicts such as cross burnings, neighbour fighting neighbour, and genuine fear of simply existing in the chaotic world. Lest you who read this review are hesitant, let me assure you. This author was able to wonderfully blend the horrific truth of the past with the beauty of a long-awaited love story."
"The dialogue throughout is simply superb. It is consistently realistic and revealing, and never fails to move the story along... The challenges Tyler and Madison must face are interesting and unpredictable though, so the well-developed characters make A Long Shadow worth reading."
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