This book is a real achievement in highlighting the problems of native American species of birds and the predations they suffer.
Alas, as a romance, this book is a non-starter. The couple kiss once, have sex immediately after, and then basically split up again when he finally makes clear that he is still married. He should have told her clearly long before he ever dragged her out into the wilderness to have his way with her. Most of the time he never even speaks and is little better than a Neanderthal, so it is not really a surprise, but it sort of puts the reader off him apart from his love of birds. His inadequate love for his daughter is also a real turn off. And his sticking to his terrible mother and wife just silly.
Harris is a weak man in every sense of the word, someone who cannot say no to any woman in his life. His wife Fannie is a sterotype, and the daughter too. Even Ella, the supposed heroine, is as wooden as a cigar store Indian. A complte sterotype of ood little girl, plin, middle aged, raised by maiden aunts and as sexy as white bread. There is no passion and not even an angst because Harris makes it clear as soon as they have had sex that he has no intention of divorcing his wife. Pity he didn't tell her before!!
He goes back to his wife, and in fact very nearly has sex with her until he gropes her so extensively that he finds she is up to her old tricks of stealing drugs from his clinic to feed her habit. And of course Fannie is such a monster that she threatens to take away the bird sanctuary by demanding one half of all he has when he finally does tell her it is over because she is so selfish that he is neglecting her own 6 yr old diabetic daughter.
The whole secondary plots with Brady and Lijah drag the book out even further into what is essentially a soulless read apart from what the author has meticulously researched about birds. She would have been better off writing non-fiction!
Then ending can be seen coming a mile off, and my only wonder is that Ella immediately agrees to marry him with his wife's dead body not three feet away and scarcely cold. She would have been better off with a man with a heart.
This is a good author who really needs to learn how to write a balanced book with emotionally mature and deep characters, and real problems and situations that they actively solve, rather than have ten ton weights land on their head all the time. And characters who have sensuality, and don't merely take their clothes of and get on with it in a sentence or two.
