A Gentle Rain
Authors: Deborah F. Smith
Tags: #Ranch Life - Florida, #Contemporary Women, #Ranchers, #Florida, #Contemporary, #General, #Romance, #Heiresses, #Connecticut, #Inheritance and succession, #Birthparents, #Fiction, #Domestic fiction, #kindleconvert, #Ranch Life
Table of Contents
Praise for Award-Winning Author
Deborah Smith
"An extraordinarily talented author."
-Mary Alice Monroe
"A storyteller of distinction."
BookPage
"An exceptional storyteller."
-Booklist
"Deborah Smith just keeps getting better."
Publishers Weekly
"Readers of the novels of Anne Rivers Siddons will welcome into their hearts Deborah Smith."
Mid west Book Review
Praise for The Crossroads Cafe
Winner
- HOLT Medallion, Write Touch Reader's Award, Reviewer's International Award (RIO)
Bronze medal
Ippy Awards, Independent Publisher Magazine
Bronze medal
-Book of the Year Awards, Foreword Magazine
"A top five romance of 2006."
-Library journal, starred review
"Unforgettably poignant."
-Booklist
"A perfect 10.'
-Romance Reviews Today
"The best romance of 2006."
-The Romance Reader
"A true treasure."
-Romantic Times BookClub
"A book that readers will open again and again."
-Romance Designs
Other Novels by
Deborah Smith
The Crossroads Cafe
Charming Grace
Sweet Hush
The Stone Flower Garden
On Bear Mountain
When Venus Fell
A Place To Call Home
Silk and Stone
Blue Willow
Miracle
Alice At Heart
Diary of a Radical Mermaid
The Beloved Woman
Blush
(Summer 2008)
~jctt/~#a
CA
Dedication
To Mother You're still my best friend.
Author Note
Tiny crabs and periwinkles seem like the most exotic creatures in the universe when you're five years old and standing, for the first time, barefoot and pale-skinned, on a Florida beach. When I was a child growing up in the dull suburban foothills ofAtlanta, a week-long trip to the beaches of the vast, Atlantic surf along the cusp of northern Florida was an adventure beyond the wildest imaginings.
It included an all-night-and-next-day drive in the family station wagon, a brand-new set of plastic beach toys from the dimestore, an aging metal ice chest filled with soft drinks and cold fried chicken to stave off hunger on the lonely highways, and a burning desire to bring back an entire paper grocery bag filled with stinky clam shells.
Along the way I reveled in the colorful roadside stands, not just the ubiquitous Stuckey's of Southern highway fame but inventive Florida tourist lures with names like King Gator and Orange Mama's, all of which were stocked with seashell ashtrays, bags of fresh citrus fruits, and carved-coconut Indian heads.
I craved the challenge ofwalking on burning-hot sand flecked with sharp shards of oyster shell. I stared in awe at flocks of seagulls and pelicans. Florida also promised me the jaw-dropping sight of palm trees, pink flamingoes, and Spanish moss.
Long before Walt Disney arrived in Orlando, Florida was the Magic Kingdom to me.
My husband, Hank, and I honeymooned on the Gulf coast in Clearwater, finding a rare, perfectly intact sand dollar on the beach the first day, which we have kept, just as dear as any stinky clam shell, ever since. We christened our married life with dinners at Tampa's ode to beef-andmartinis, the legendary Bern's Steak House, and gaped at flamenco dancers over paella at The Columbia.
My in-laws retired to Florida a few years later, happily ensconced in the oldest, most historic city of the continental United States, St. Augustine.
During my many visits there, I became enamored of the `other' Florida, home to four centuries of elegant, colorful and bawdy history: Seminole Indians, Spanish conquistadores, French pirates, British colonials, African slaves and African freemen, Civil War heroes, cattle barons and turpentine kings, the gilded age of Flagler and his railroads, the suave machismo of Hemingway at Key West, and, most of all, the acclaimed books of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Florida's Pulitzer-winning storyteller.
As a child, I devoured her classic novel, The Yearling, and still cried every time I watched the grainy, black-and-white Hollywood version starring Gregory Peck. As an adult, I made many pilgrimages into the heart of northern Florida's woodlands and blackwater rivers to visit the wonderfully eccentric communities around Marjorie's beloved Florida homestead at Cross Creek.
I found the world of inland, "Cracker" Florida to be just as rugged, mysterious and fascinating as she'd said it was; I fell in love with the Florida of vegetable farms, beef-cattle ranches, wild Cracker horses descended from Spanish herds, and spring-fed lakes so deep that no one, not even a tough Cracker fisherman, could say where they ended.
Over the years my love affair with Florida and all its many stories has grown and deepened even more. From shuttle launches at the Cape to fried 'gator tail and fresh oysters at a fish camp in Apalachicola, from Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth to the eternal youth of a South Beach nightclub, Florida is a kingdom of many faces, all of them a little sunburned, most a bit rebellious, and many with an appreciation for the lovably unusual.
In Florida, we can all become cowboys and pirates and mermaids. The oceans on both sides of the world are just "over there," and even that ordinary little lake by your hotel parking lot may be a bottomless wonderland hiding the bones of dinosaurs.
The vast grasslands and marshes of inland Florida harbor the memories of cattle drives and ancient native battles, of Seminole chickees and African basket-weavers.
And even now, among the golf courses and resorts of modern times, if you look deep into the woods at night, their shadows draped in moss, their paths footed with sand and seashells brought there by the winds and waters of the world, you may see the heart of Florida looking back at you in the eyes of a wild Cracker horse.
I wrote A Gentle Rain to share that heart, as I have lived and loved it so far, with others.
~erctf~
CA
Deborah Smith
