April 2011

Lisa Lickel is a Wisconsin writer who lives with her husband in a hundred and sixty-year-old house built by a Great Lakes ship captain. Surrounded by books and dragons, she writes inspiring fiction. Her published novels include mystery and romance, all with a twist of grace. She has penned dozens of feature newspaper stories, short stories, magazine articles and radio theater. She is the editor in chief of Creative Wisconsin magazine. Lisa also is an avid book reviewer, blogger, a freelance editor, and writing mentor. She loves to encourage new authors.

Read more about Lisa Lickel.

Title:  Love Finds You in Tombstone Arizona
Author: Miralee Ferrell
Publisher: Summerside Press
Date:  February 2011
ISBN: 978-1609361044
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewed by: Lisa Lickel

In May, the ACFW Bookclub will read two books. One of them is Love Finds You in Tombstone, Arizona by Miralee Ferrell. Join now to read this book with Lisa Lickel and other bookclub members.

Second chances aren’t easy to come by in a town named Tombstone.

With a teaser like that, the reader can smell the sagebrush and saddle leather.

Christy Grey is called home to California by her younger brother Joshua when he runs out of ways to make ends meet for his consumptive mother. It’s spring in 1881, and disease runs rampant in the Arizona desert town where water is almost as precious a commodity as the silver mined there. Tombstone calls to mind all that’s legendary about the Wild West.

James Nevada King is called into another unwelcome duel in Albuquerque and must run for his life after he reluctantly kills a man in self-defense. All King wants is to settle down, but his reputation as a gun-slinger seems to greet him wherever he goes.

A friendly group of desert travelers King shares a meal and campfire with turn out to be thieves, and he gets caught up in their scheme when he tries to save an innocent life. If only the wounded girl will keep his identity a secret, he’l be able to breathe free. But she doesn’t trust him—so he can’t relax. Especially when he also can’t stop thinking about her.

Christy, who has a run-in with a nasty gang of thieves who rob her stagecoach and accidentally shoot her in the arm, is shocked at the living conditions she finds once she arrives alive in Tombstone. Joshua has fallen into the bad gambling and carousing habits of their absent stepfather, and someone must get work to pay for their hovel, food, and water.

There aren’t too many choices in town, and Christy, who once worked in a saloon, stoops to work in a notorious saloon in the company of Bat Masterson, the Earps, and Doc Holliday. She befriends one of the working girls, and together, they plot their escape to a better life.

I enjoyed the touches of personality Miralee Ferrell gives her characters and her well-researched settings.

I enjoyed the touches of personality Miralee Ferrell gives her characters and her well-researched settings. Even though there are plenty of accounts of the events in Tombstone, it’s enlightening to see the other side of the historical working class. Life was hard and there were few options to make a living that didn’t involve taking advantage of someone else. Ferrell does a wonderful job of creating sympathetic characters to cheer on in a “larger than life” era. If you’re a history lover like me, you’ll enjoy Love Finds You in Tombstone Arizona.