Because of Our Child

BECAUSE OF OUR CHILD by Margot Early February 28, 2007 Rating **** (4 Stars) Thirteen years ago, Jen Delazzeri and Max Rickman were college students who worked as 'hot shots' to help put out fires in Southern California, specifically in the Santa Inez area (not too far from Santa Barbara). During this particular fire, Max's fiancée Salma was burnt to death, and to seek comfort, Max and Jen turned to each other for solace after the devastating event. It is now 13 years later and Jen is the mother of a twelve-year-old daughter, and she has yet to tell Max about her. Jen is now a reporter and is in town to cover a fire that Max was involved with. Jen and her crew are in the middle of this fire, and this time, someone gets hurt, due to the fact that someone felt the need to protect camera equipment. Because of the fire, Jen and Max will be working together, and so there is no avoiding the issue now. Reluctantly Jen finally reveals her secret to him, after a few false starts. And this news changes Max's life forever. BECAUSE OF OUR CHILD focuses on two plot lines. The first is the secret of their daughter that Jen kept from Max for the past thirteen years, and the reason for her keeping this secret from him. It is slowly revealed that Jen always felt that Max would never love her, and therefore did not want to bring up the fact that they shared a daughter together. The memory of his dead fiancée always stood between them. And despite Jen's own feelings for him, a man who was a bit older than she was while she was as an undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, she kept her love a secret because she did not want to get involved in a loveless relationship. The other plot line involved the original fire that had brought them together. Max was convinced that someone was to blame for the fire, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it. With Jen's and her sister's help, he wants to film a documentary that will help shed some light on what really happened thirteen years ago, a devastating tragedy that resulted in the death of a young woman. Jen's mentally ill sister was also another subplot, a woman who also was involved in the fire thirteen years ago and who witnessed Salma's death. That fire impacted many people that day, but possibly affected Jen's sister the most, who remained dependent on her family to get by each and every day. An absorbing novel that will keep the reader hooked, BECAUSE OF OUR CHILD gets my recommendation.

In Colorado because two smoke jumpers died fighting a blaze on Storm King Mountain, TV news reporter Jen Delazzeri is sent to cover the tragic breaking story. Jen does not want to go there or have anything to do with covering fires as she can still smell smoke from the devastating 1994 blaze that took the lives of fourteen firefighters. Smoke jumper Max Rickman saved her life back then and soon after they made love. However, he ended their relationship immediately feeling guilty as one of the dead was his fiancée. Still if she wants to go network she needs to cover whatever the local station assigns her so Jen goes to the sight. There she meets Max again; he has never forgotten her, but becomes irate to learn he sired a child with Jen that she never mentioned to him before though he logically understands her reasoning. He demands time with his twelve year old daughter Elena and wants Jen to apply her investigative skills to what led to that tragedy almost thirteen years ago even as the adults fall in love. Though the plot of not revealing a child to the father until years later has been over done in romance novels, Margot Early refreshes it with strong lead characters starring in a powerfully vivid story line; readers will smell the smoke. Jen and Max are likable heroic protagonists who have that previous deadly fire between them. The love connecting them both wants the best for Elena; who realistically has major doubts that her parents should marry leading the pair prepared to ignore their attraction BECAUSE OF THEIR CHILD. Harriet Klausner