My review of Wind Over Marshdale by Tracy Krauss

About the book:

Marshdale. Just a small farming community where nothing special happens. A perfect place to start over… or get lost. There is definitely more to this prairie town than meets the eye. Once the meeting place of aboriginal tribes for miles around, some say the land itself was cursed because of the people’s sin. But its history goes farther back than even indigenous oral history can trace and there is still a direct descendant who has been handed the truth, like it or not. Exactly what ties does the land have to the medicine of the ancients? Is it cursed, or is it all superstition?


My review:

There are a lot of good books to choose from these days, but not many intrigue me as much as this one managed to do. The story started out a bit slow, but once the foundation was laid the plot grabbed me I couldn't stop reading. The characters were realistic and the conflict was palpable. And romantic tension? This book was loaded with it as well as convincing inner dialog that showed how the mind and heart are often affected by the past...and not often in good way. I appreciated how there were more points of view than just the hero and heroine's.

My favorite part of this novel, however, was the spiritual journey of each character and how the author showed that a little compromising can create a whole lot of heartache. She also did a fabulous job showing how someone goes from stepping over the line for a few seconds to being quickly enslaved to sin and feeling defeated by it to the point that your spiritual life becomes a sham. A solid message in this story was that we need to be there for each other to help pull the other person out of the pit when they are too weak to climb out themselves. Setting our prejudices aside and allowing God to use us to minister to others is key, whether the prejudice has to do with race, religion, or a feeling of spiritual superiority. Well done!

My heart was engaged by this novel in a way that will leave me thinking about the story for some time. In a way, this book felt like a high concept novel to me in that it subtly delved into areas that make you think about your own life and how the spiritual realm works. The author managed to create a story with spiritual warfare in it, yet there was no obvious thread or plot there, which made it that much more convincing to me. Much like real life, in fact. I loved Con and Rachel and appreciated their struggles. I also enjoyed how they learned from each other despite their rocky beginning. Their honesty was refreshing.

There were a lot of things to love about this book, but I don't want to say too much. There is plenty of intrigue and mystery to keep any reader's attention, but for lovers of romance, this one will make your heart pound. The author delves deep, and because her characters all have pasts, the story is that much more convincing. I loved it!

Wind Over Marshdale was published by Astraea Press and released June 11, 2012.