From Amazon.com
Musical prodigy Venus Arinelli's life shattered at the age of 19 when her father was arrested for anti-government activity. When he died of a heart attack a week later while in custody, Venus took her younger sister and ran from accusations and harassment. Ten years later, she's still running from the government agencies that are eager to place the blame on her every time a subversive group explodes a bomb in the United States.
Gib Cameron was a child of 5 when Venus's parents were married at Cameron Hall. Steeped in tradition, Gib's family is well respected and firmly rooted in American history, while Venus's is notorious and barely a generation away from immigration. But tragedy has come knocking on the venerable door of the Cameron stronghold high in the Tennessee hills, and the matriarchal great-aunt of the clan orders Gib to find the Arinelli sisters and bring them to the Hall. Shari Kirk and Max Arinelli were the first guests to stay there, and the great-aunt believes that their daughters hold the key to the survival of the Hall and the healing of her family.
Gib and Venus are worlds apart on the surface--she with her pierced navel, wild clothing, and career as a lounge musician, and he with his conservative clothing, schooling at the Citadel, and career as a Secret Service agent. But they are soul mates under their skins, for each is deeply honorable, wary of love, and fiercely protective of their families.
The two share in an arduous journey of the heart, searching the past to heal the present and find a future. They take with them a collection of fascinating, well-developed secondary characters in a story that mixes pathos with humor and is rich with human emotion, lush landscapes, and a plot so well conceived that it resonates like a finely tuned Steinway. --Lois Faye Dyer
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From Publishers Weekly
Louisiana bohemian Venus Arinelli and Tennessee aristocrat Gib Cameron, the protagonists of this well-meaning but strained romance, come from very different, but equally tragic, backgrounds. Venus had her dreams of a career as a classical pianist dashed by scandal when her Japanese-Italian, nightclub-owner father died in prison, having been accused of murdering a federal judge. Gib became a member of the Secret Service after an IRA bomb killed his parents on vacation in England. Yet the families forged a bond when Venus's parents were married at the Cameron family inn in 1968, its first year of operation. Thirty years later, GibAa man who represents everything that tough Venus hatesAshows up, with a big surprise and a desperate proposition, at the bar where Venus and her dotty sister, Ella, are performing as lounge musicians. It seems Mr. Arinelli left his daughters $100,000, possibly dirty money, in the Camerons' hands. Gib will turn the money over to them, no questions asked, if they return to the inn and, by their presence, help him persuade his relatives not to sell. Smith (A Place to Call Home) comes on like Kaye Gibbons with humor; her tale of redemption and learning to trust again is by turns sad, funny and touching. But given the blithe improbability of the setup, Gib's earnest flag-waving and Venus's spitfire anti-establishment views do little to endear us to either character.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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édition.
