Bill Vincent, investigative reporter is on the lam when he takes on the men who killed his wife. In the Central Valley of California, he meets Jim Garret, a grape rancher with political ambitions. Cleared of his past sins, Vincent becomes Garret's political guru while falling in love with Kat, Garret's wife. Vincent confronts the politicians who run against Garret and emerges with a win.
Genre: FICTION / Contemporary Womenhigh rankings, good reviews, moderate sales.
It is a big Valley that stretches from the Tehachapi Mountains on the South up past Sacramento to Redding and the Siskiyous to the north and from the Sierra Nevada on the East to the Coast Range on the West. Into it flow two rivers – the Sacramento and the San Joaquin and out of it flow the fruit and vegetables that feed a nation. It is a big Valley, a huge Valley, an enormous Valley and the men and women who live in it are hard driven by heat and frost, by drought and flood to turn it into paradise.
In March, when the peach trees blossom, the Valley from Bakersfield to Sacramento transforms into a sea of white and pink and the air is redolent with the perfume of the fruit, and in the quiet spaces between the trees, you hear the buzz of a bees as they pollinate the flowers. In late March, sometimes early April the Pacific pushes its black clouds over the Tehachapi Mountains and bring dark water to hammer away the blossoms and in the after-rain of a week-long wetting the ground from Bakersfield to Sacramento is a white and pink carpet of fallen flowers. In the stipling sunlight ranchers count the budded fruit left on the trees and in the eyes of these men you see the tears of failure and the fear of falling that haunts their dreams.
Jim Garret is one of those men.
