Ride the Whirlwind
Jackie North
M/M
Romance, Time travel, Historical
Release
Date: 09.17.19
Cover Designer - Jay Aheer
Blurb
Soulmates
across time. Two hearts, stronger together.
In present
day, Maxton is good at finding trouble and bad at everything else. Then he
receives a letter from his friend Laurie, who went missing. The letter is dated
over one hundred years in the past.
In 1892,
Trent Harrington, sheriff of Trinidad, Colorado, cast off by his family, lives
a respectable but lonely life, devoid of any closeness. He knows he will be
alone forever.
Trying to
escape a past that keeps chasing him, Maxton drives south to Mexico. When his
car spins off the road, he is swept up in a desert whirlwind, which takes him
back in time to the year 1892. There, unused to the laws of the wild west,
Maxton gets arrested, and is subject to the terrifying whims of two deputies
who can do whatever they want to him.
Sheriff
Trent Harrington of Trinidad is tasked with escorting Maxton to Trinidad. The
request isn’t unusual, but the young miscreant is. Maxton draws Trent’s heart
out of its shell with his flashing green eyes and lush head of hair. It isn’t
right. It isn’t natural. It’s illegal. Yet Trent cannot resist the impetuous
young man.
As the two
men travel through the dry, lonely desert to their destination, will they find
in each other the love and companionship they never thought they’d have?
A male/male
time travel romance, complete with the scent of desert roses, brilliantly
colored sunsets, starlit nights, roast rabbit over an open fire, growing
honesty and trust, and true love across time.
Contains
references to Honey From the Lion and Wild as the West Texas Wind but can be
read on its own.
Buy Link: http://mybook.to/RideTheWhirlwind
Review
Ride the Whirlwind,
the fourth book in Jackie North’s Love
Across Time series is also the final chapter in the saga of three friends,
Laurie, Zach and Maxton who all have met up in a small, idyllic frontier town
in 1892. While all three men arrived there in a different manner, this story
focuses on Maxton, the most interesting of the three men, in my opinion, and
the one who has the most to gain by stepping back in time. Maxton is a product
of a broken foster care system that has left him abused, bitter and too often
hasty to make poor decisions. Maxton is also a person of interest in the modern
day world in the disappearances of both his friends. So with the FBI looking
closely at him as a potential murderer and a backstreet drug gang unhappy with
him, Maxton is ready to escape to the past. However, the present doesn’t seem
to want let him go so easily.
When Sherriff Trent Harrington is told to pick up a prisoner
on his way home to Trinidad, Colorado, all he knows is the man had stolen a
wallet and done other distasteful acts. Little does he realize that Maxton will
be the catalyst for him to reexamine how he has been living (or essentially not
living) his life. Trent has been alone for so long and now the angry hellcat
he’s been tasked to deliver to the Adeline Hotel is making him feel all kinds
of things that he’d buried so long ago.
This story was more of a straight up slow burn romance than
an action adventure like the others in this series. While there were times when
I felt the idea of how Maxton felt--that the world was about to dump on him
once again and so he couldn’t allow himself to get too close to Trent--was a
bit repetitive, I still really loved the dynamic between these two polar
opposite men. The fact that Maxton opened up Trent’s eyes to something he had
been craving all of his life and feared doing turned out to be a beautiful
theme running through the story. Here was a very self-controlled, pragmatic man
finally discovering that the closet he had been so secure in was actually a
prison cell from which he longed to escape. Really the moments when these two
came together both physically and during their intimate conversations made this
novel a truly beautiful read.
I’m not sure if this will be the last installment in this
series or if the author will pick up new characters and timeframes to explore
but as always her meticulous study of the era in history she chooses to
highlight make these novels stand out in the historical fiction genre.
Excerpt
Trent stepped off the stagecoach, took his
small, leather-handled carpet bag from the top of the coach, and breathed a
sigh of relief. It wasn't that he got sick on stagecoaches, no. It was that
there were so many people jammed into a space that rocked for hours and became
filled with dust, that is, when it wasn't filled with the smell of stale sweat
and the scent of nerves on edge. Stagecoaches had to be the worst way that God
invented for man to travel. There were better ways, like on foot or by
horseback. Never mind. He had arrived in Dilia.
Taking off his hat, he wiped his forehead with
the back of his arm, which left a broad sweat stain on his shirt sleeve. He
sighed again, put his hat back on and looked up and down the street for the
jail.
He had two telegrams in his breast pocket
beneath his vest, but he was no closer to understanding what was going on, or
why he'd been waylaid from his plans, his very straightforward plans, to head
back to Trinidad from Deming, deep in New Mexico Territory, where he'd been
asked to witness a hanging.
Deming had been quite far to travel for such a
gory, unsavory task as a hanging. However, the governor of New Mexico
Territory, one LaBaron Prince, had asked for him in particular, seeing as how
he'd been present at the capture of Fenton Barrow, otherwise known as Pretty
Boy Barrow, known for stagecoach holdups and petty larceny and the stealing of
cows.
Now that the unpleasant task had been completed,
with witness documents signed, he'd been more than ready to head home to
Trinidad. Unfortunately, he'd gotten a telegram from the small town of Dilia,
instructing him to detour to Dilia to transport one Maxton Barnett to Trinidad.
In Dilia, the sheriff and his two deputies had
in their care a young miscreant who they wanted taken away before the whole
town rose up in rebellion. It all sounded rather dramatic, and not what he'd
expect from a fellow sheriff, even if the telegram explained, in very short
words, the crime of picking pockets and, mysteriously, other unsavory acts.
Only his sense of duty would encourage him to
follow through with the request to pick up the low-life criminal and escort him
back to Trinidad, from whence it was said he'd come. Then, of all the queer
things, just before he'd gotten on the stagecoach in Deming, he'd received a
second telegram, this time from Mr. Laurie Quinn of the Adeline Hotel in
Trinidad.
Mr. Quinn was known to him, a recent newcomer to
the town with enough energy for three young men, a dazzling smile, and a sweet
laugh that would light up the darkest room. Trent had done his best to remain
unmoved, but it was hard, especially when Laurie had the most beautiful brown
eyes, and dark auburn hair shot with gold. He was like a handsome out of a
painting, with slender hips, and long legs, and a vivacious air and zest for
life.
But not only did Laurie's companion, a dour,
grim-faced, broad-shouldered man by the name of John Henton, keep Trent from
responding, he was also held back by his own promise to himself. He could not
make the same mistake that he'd made back home in Aiken, South Carolina, one
that had involved kissing a sweet-faced choir boy after church one Sunday.
The kiss had been brief and there'd been an
energy in Trent to pull the choir boy into his arms and do more than just kiss.
But he'd been unable to act upon that flash of heat and desire as his father
had discovered him, waited till his mother died, and then banished him,
separating Trent from his sister Lucy.
It had been five years since he'd talked to
either of them, though once in a while a letter would come from his father
berating him further and taunting him with news about Lucy, but never really
telling him anything about what was going on with her. It was like part of him
had been cut off, leaving him numb and aching, staring at the ceiling in the
middle of the night, wondering how it might have turned out differently if
Father hadn't discovered him.
Jackie North has been writing stories since
grade school and spent years absorbing the mainstream romances that she found
at her local grocery store. Her dream was to someday leave her corporate day
job behind and travel the world. She also wanted to put her English degree to
good use and write romance novels, because for years she’s had a never-ending
movie of made-up love stories in her head that simply wouldn’t leave her alone.
As fate would have it, she discovered m/m
romance and decided that men falling in love with other men was exactly what
she wanted to write books about. In this dazzling new world, she turned her
grocery-store romance ideas around and is now putting them to paper as fast as
her fingers can type. She creates characters who are a bit flawed and broken,
who find themselves on the edge of society, and maybe a few who are a little
bit lost, but who all deserve a happily ever after. (And she makes sure they
get it!)
She likes long walks on the beach, the smell of
lavender and rainstorms, and enjoys sleeping in on snowy mornings. She is
especially fond of pizza and beer and, when time allows, long road trips with
soda fountain drinks and rock and roll music. In her heart, there is peace to
be found everywhere, but since in the real world this isn’t always true, Jackie
writes for love.
Website - http://www.jackienorth.com/
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