A MOONBOW NIGHT
by
LAURA FRANTZ
Genre: Historical Romance / Christian
Publisher: Revell / Baker Publishing Group
Date of Publication: January 3, 2017
Number of Pages: 384
Scroll down for Giveaway!
After fleeing Virginia, Temperance Tucker and her family established an inn along the Shawnee River. It’s a welcome way station for settlers and frontiersmen traveling through the wild Cumberland region of Kentucky—men like Sion Morgan, a Virginia surveyor who arrives at the inn with his crew, looking for an experienced guide.
Though he balks when Tempe is appointed to lead his team through the wilderness, it isn’t long before Sion must admit that her abilities may outmatch his own. But can the tenuous tie they are forming survive the dangers waiting just around the bend?
With her signature sweeping style and ability to bring the distant past to vivid life, Laura Frantz beckons you to join her in a land of Indian ambushes, conflicting loyalties, and a tentative love that meanders like a cool mountain stream.
***
PRAISE FOR A MOONBOW NIGHT:
“From the very first page, A Moonbow Night charmed me into its story, a story as earthy, rugged, and beguiling as the early American terrain upon which it has been laid. The book offers everything this reader wants: fidelity to history with rich, sensory details of time and place; names we’ve known fleetingly from the annals of the past who quicken on the page; fictional friends for whose happiness and romantic redemption we yearn. Tempe is a Kentucky heroine worth our time and heart’s investment—a waif on the outside, steel on the inside, kind in every situation. In Sion we find a hero worthy of the title, willing to grapple with his past to own his present and claim his lady. The plot is complex, tense, and layered and resolves in a most satisfying conclusion. This remarkable, elegantly written novel pulses with life and is a must-read for all who love historical romance.”
—Sandra Byrd, author of A Lady in Disguise
“A Moonbow Night captures the wilds of a young and unyielding American frontier with breathtaking action and Laura Frantz’s signature mastery in storytelling. The effortless merging of narrative with intelligent dialogue allows the spot-on historical research to shine. Sion’s understated valor is in perfect step with Tempe’s independence, making them a pairing that will keep readers turning pages and rooting for them to the end. This is an exquisite novel of love and loss, and a sweet reminder that even in an untamed world, the gentle grace of God heals all wounds.”
—Kristy Cambron, author of The Illusionist’s Apprentice and the Hidden Masterpiece series
“As timeless as it is historical, A Moonbow Night is the shining embodiment of everything Laura Frantz does best, from her trademark attention to detail to the unfolding of rich and textured love in a setting no less complex. To read this novel is to take a journey along with the characters, inhabiting the story with all five senses. Truly, a book to savor and revisit.”
—Jocelyn Green, award-winning author of The Mark of the King
Excerpt, Part I
from Chapter 1 of The Moonbow Night
By Laura Frantz
Come to a turabel mountain that tried us almost to death to git over it.
—William Calk, His Jurnal
March ye 25th 1775 Satterday
March ye 25th 1775 Satterday
What cannot be cured must be endured.
There was no cure for the whirling April snow, the cold seeping through thin, trail-worn moccasins from the frozen forest floor. No cure for the tender back of his favorite mare now courting a saddle sore or the dog fight that had just occurred over the paltry remains of a winter-starved deer. No cure for the beef-and-biscuit Englishman at the rear of their small party whose every labored breath was an epithet.
Sion Morgan’s own breathing, honed on numerous forays, was heavy. But he reckoned it was more the beauty that stole both his wind and speech. Underfoot was a tangle of cress and purslane and clover. On every side redbud and dogwood were blossoming, breaking through the avalanche of greens with blazing bursts of purple and cream.
Ahead was the saddle of the Gap, the gateway to Kentucke, a whirl of windy white. They’d come three hundred miles since Fort Henry. Only one hundred more to go. The crude maps Sion had pored over, crafted by Walker and Boone and the few men who’d gone before, blurred in his weary brain. A few details lured him.
A sandy cave . . . a seasonal waterfall . . . a staggering vista. All to be had but a few rods more.
“Morgan! Will you drive us like livestock?” Cornelius Lyon paused to spit out another curse, this one the most colorful by far. “By all that is holy, this mountain’s the devil’s own stairway and naught else!”
Setting his jaw, Sion pressed ahead, shrugging aside his aggravation. He couldn’t fault Cornelius’s logic. The climb was brutal, each step so steep, so treacherous, one dared not look down or pause or speak.
But Cornelius wasn’t done with his bellowing. “Why such haste? Surely the savages wouldn’t be out on such a day!”
The clipped, bitter words bore a challenge. Heat rising, his gait unbroken, Sion shifted his rifle to his other hand and squinted as a stinging wind slapped his face. He was glad six packhorses, two chain carriers, and a marker separated them, lest he give vent to his temper and send Cornelius Lyon over the cliff.
The uncharitable thought had barely cleared his head when a commotion arose from behind, sudden enough to chill the blood. He’d seen Indian sign farther back but had said nothing, the snow obliterating the Warrior’s Path. Now he swung round to see a packhorse lose his footing and tumble from the trace. Down, down, down the big bay went, skinning hide and hair in a vicious descent against jagged rock. Its anguished whinny set the dogs to howling, a mournful chorus that carried on the wind.
For a few dizzying moments Sion felt woozy. Seeing the animal’s deathly struggle, he shouldered his flintlock and sighted, firing down past rock and brush to where the horse lay bleeding and broken. When the animal stilled, he gritted his teeth against the jarring impact as he leapt from the trace onto a slick ledge of limestone below, gun held high in his right hand, all in an ungraceful attempt to rescue the provisions the bay had been carrying.
Reaching bottom, he looked up to find eight wide eyes on him—all but Nate Stoner, who kept his back to the chasm, his rifle trained on the hills above in case of ambush.
Fingers cold and cramped, Sion set his rifle aside, took out his hunting knife, and sliced free the precious stores of gunpowder and bullet lead. Once they were secured to his back, he began the slow uphill climb. Twice he nearly tumbled backwards, his footing unsure, gaze clouded with snow. By the time he reached the top and his chain carriers rushed to lighten his load, he was bruised and bloody-knuckled, the earth driven deep beneath his fingernails, the mournful weight of a lost packhorse pressing down with a vengeance.
A warm, wet nuzzle to his hand brought comfort. Smokey, his collie, leaned into him before bounding ahead with a sharp yip to spur him on. The trace couldn’t climb much higher. The tree line was thinning, the snow miraculously slowing. His muddy moccasins sank into sand, a strange sensation after so much rock. Overhead was a cavern.
Sand Gap.
CLICK TO PURCHASE
* Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Baker Retail * ChristianBook.com *
Laura Frantz is a Christy Award finalist and the author of several books, including The Frontiersman’s Daughter, Courting Morrow Little, The Colonel’s Lady, The Mistress of Tall Acre, and the Ballantyne Legacy series. She lives and writes in a log cabin in the heart of Kentucky.
---------------------------------------
GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!
GRAND PRIZE WINNER: SIGNED COPY + DERBY PIE BASKET
1ST RUNNER-UP: SIGNED COPY + $10 STARBUCKS GIFT CARD
2ND RUNNER-UP: SIGNED COPY + $10 BARNES & NOBLE GIFT CARD
(US ONLY; COPIES INCLUDE AUTHOR SIGNED BOOKPLATES)
January 3 - January 12, 2017
GRAND PRIZE WINNER: SIGNED COPY + DERBY PIE BASKET
1ST RUNNER-UP: SIGNED COPY + $10 STARBUCKS GIFT CARD
2ND RUNNER-UP: SIGNED COPY + $10 BARNES & NOBLE GIFT CARD
(US ONLY; COPIES INCLUDE AUTHOR SIGNED BOOKPLATES)
January 3 - January 12, 2017
CHECK OUT THE OTHER GREAT BLOGS ON THE TOUR:
|
blog tour services provided by:
NOTE FROM KRISTINE at HALL WAYS: The content of this promo post was provided by Lone Star Book Blog Tours.
If you're a Texas blogger interested in joining the ranks as a blogger for Lone Star Book Blog Tours,
contact Kristine via the Contact Form found at the bottom of the Hall Ways blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment