Remembered by Tamera Alexander

Title: Remembered
Author: Tamera Alexander
ISBN: 978-0-7642-0110-3


From the back cover:

The threat of war ~ and a final request ~ send Veronique Girard from France to a distant and uninviting country. In the Colorado Territory, she searches for the man who has held her heart since childhood ~ her father. Pierre Girard left Paris for the Americas to seek his fortune in fur trading, vowing to send for his wife and daughter. But twenty-five years have passed and his vow remains unfulfilled. Sifting through shards of broken promises, Veronique embarks on a dangerous search for a man she scarcely remembers.

His grief finally healed, Jack Brennan is moving on with life. After years of guiding families west, he is now working as a freighter to the mining towns surrounding Willow Springs. What he doesn't count on is an unexpected traveling companion on his trips up into the mountains, and how one woman's search will cause havoc with his plans... and his life.
~~~

Tamera Alexander is one of my very favorite authors. This book is a perfect example of all the things I love about her writing. There are no stiff characters here. Veronique, Jack, Mr. Colby, Miss Maudie... they all stepped off the page ~ living and breathing. I could picture them in my mind, I could hear their voices and believed their personalities.

She does a beautiful job of creating relationship and chemistry between the main characters, but she doesn't limit her talents to them. Nearly everyone you meet in the book gets treated with the same ample paintbrush. I feel as if I traveled to Willow Springs and met the fine people there myself. ;o)

Veronique is a wonderful heroine. She is the perfect mix of naive, feisty, stubborn and good-hearted. I loved the way her character changed in a multitude of ways over the course of the book. It would have been easy to label her as the "city" girl and then have her learn to fit in and make herself useful in her new surroundings ~ but Tamera went the extra mile.

Jack is a great character. He's an unusual hero in that most of his stress and trial happens before the book starts. We learn about it as he shares the story. His sense of humor (and sometimes being the butt of someone else's) often made me smile. That's the real test of a great book for me. If I find myself moved to laugh, cry, or think about the book even when I'm not reading it, then I know it has to be a winner. This one did all of the above.

I won Remembered in a contest (Not from the author- and I wasn't paid in any way to review it, nor was I expected to. Consider this my disclaimer.). So, I read it out of order (I know- bad Lee). But I will be picking up the rest of these. If you haven't discovered this series yet, I wholeheartedly recommend them.