Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Serials and Scenarios ~ Breathe ~ Lisa T. Bergren



Lisa has visited before. Check out her interview and reviews of previous books.



To make a new life, she'll have to learn how to breathe again...

By the time Dominic and Moira St. Clair get their ailing sister, Odessa, to Colorado Springs in the winter of 1883, she is nearly dead. Odessa has been seriously aling for the past year from consumption, an illness that claimed the lives of four of her younger brothers, prompting her father, to send his only surviving children west to chase the cure.

Moira is beautiful and dangerously headstrong; and pugnacious Dominic is charged with establishing a new arm of the family business--a business he doesn't want.
Several days after her arrival, Odessa witnesses what she fears is the murder of miner Sam O’Toole, friend and neighbor to the charming Bryce McAllan.

What’s more, Sam leaves her a poem containing clues that seem to direct her to his mine, which is purported to carry a fantastic vein of silver. But if she is ever to rise from her bed again, she must first concentrate on conquering the giant that threatens her─consumption. Indeed, she must learn to breathe again─daring to embrace her life, her future, and hope in her God.

If you would like to read the first chapter of Breathe, go
HERE

My Review:

Breathe exhales drama, adventure and the lives of three siblings as their locations and situations rise and fall within the tight four-hundred pages. A silver mine mystery, a tense, suspenseful chase, spiritual changes and growth, occupation and location changes, love and life-threatening situations abound in this page-turner.

Lisa Bergren writes a solid story and multi-dimensional characters. The scenery she paints is vivid and nearly breathtaking. History and the details of the cure for consumption in Colorado Springs are fascinating. This is the beginning of a series and it is sure to be loaded as the unfinished tales are rich for the mining.

Fans of family sagas and historicals set in the wilds of Colorado need to check this novel out.