Review: Cowboy Christmas by Mary Connealy

Cowboy Christmas by Mary Connealy


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At first while reading the latest of Mary Connealy, a special Christmas book, "Cowboy Christmas", I was not quite as impressed as every other western comedy romance that I have read by such a fabulous author. Yet then I got to read chapters twenty-six and twenty-seven and every reason that I love to read Mary's books came out. I was just about hooting and hollering with chuckles. I even kept reading segments aloud to my dear hubby, who just does not care, yet even he enjoyed them. With this story, overall I love it. But I never really did connect to the main protagonist Miss Annette Talbot. She frustrated me too much. The character in this novel that I really enjoyed and anticipated each next page about was the other protagonist Elijah Walker. It was just everything about him that I loved.

This is a Christmas novel, yet can be enjoyed anytime of year. The plot just tells and anticipates of the special day to come. Once again we have a fabulous cast of characters with the good guys and the bad. This time we have both a woman that needs to understand growing in her faith, and a man who needs to find it again. Trust is a big issue, and moving past pain is another. Serious events are portrayed and of course the wonderful Mary laughs are filled through out bringing a fabulously enjoyable lightness to a page turner.

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Barbour Books (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1602601453
• ISBN-13: 978-1602601451
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches

View all my reviews >>

Go back to this post for an opportunity to enter to win a copy of your very own! US only, giveaway ends October 18th.

*A copy of this book to review was provided thanks to Angie Brillhart of Barbour Books and NetGalley.*

FIRST Chapter: Cowboy Christmas

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

Today's Wild Card author is:

Mary Connealy

and the book:

A Cowboy Christmas

Barbour Books (September 1, 2009)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

As an award-winning author, Mary Connealy lives on a Nebraska farm with her husband and is the mother of four grown daughters. She writes plays and shorts stories, and is the author of two other novels, Petticoat Ranch and Calico Canyon. Also an avid blogger, Mary is a GED instructor by day and an author by night. For more information on Mary Connealy, visit her Web site at .

Visit the author's website.

Product Details:

List Price: $10.97
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Barbour Books (September 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1602601453
ISBN-13: 978-1602601451

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

A mining camp in Missouri, November, 1879


“You’ll wear that dress, Songbird.” Claude Leveque grabbed Annette Talbot’s arm, lifted her to her toes, and shoved her backward.

Annie tripped over a chair and cried out as it toppled. The chair scraped her legs and back. Her head hit the wall of the tiny, windowless shack, and stars exploded in her eyes.

Stunned by the pain, she hit the floor, and an animal instinct sent her scrambling away from Claude. But there was nowhere to go in the twelve-by-twelve-foot cabin.

Her head cleared enough to tell her there was no escape, so she fought with will and faith. “Never.” Propping herself up on her elbows, she faced him and shouted her defiance. “I will never go out in public in that dress.”

“You’ll sing what I tell you to sing.” Claude, in his polished suit and tidily trimmed hair, looked every inch civilized—or he had, until tonight. Now he strode toward her, eyes shooting furious fire, his face twisted into soul-deep rot and sin.

“I sing as a mission.” Annie tried to press her back through the unyielding log wall. “I sing hymns. That’s the only thing—”

A huge fist closed over the front of her blouse, and Claude lifted her like a rag doll to eye level, but he didn’t strike.

He would. He’d proved that several times over since he’d come here with his disgusting demands.

She braced herself. She’d die first. Claude might not believe that, but he’d know before long.

“So, you’re willing to die for your beliefs, heh?” Claude’s fist tightened on her blouse, cutting off Annie’s air.

“Yes!” She could barely speak, but he heard. He knew.

“Are you willing to watch someone else die, Songbird? Maybe your precious friend, Elva?” He shook her and her head snapped back. “I can always find another piano player.”

“No!” Annie had to save Elva. Somehow. Of course Elva would be threatened. Annie hadn’t had time to think that far.

Elva would never stand for this. Elva would die for her beliefs, too.

A wicked laugh escaped from Claude’s twisted mouth. “She’s easily replaced. But I’ll never”—he shook her viciously—“find another singer like you.”

How had it come to this? God help me. Protect Elva and me.

“My answer is no! Elva wouldn’t play the piano for me if I wore that.” Her eyes went to the slattern’s dress hanging, vivid red, near the door. “She would refuse to play the piano for those vulgar songs.”

“We’ll see, Songbird.” Claude laughed again.

Annie saw the evil in him, the hunger to hurt. He wasn’t just hurting Annie to get his way. He was enjoying it. Her vision dimmed and blurred as she clawed at his strangling fist.

“I’ll go have a talk with your frail old friend and then we’ll see.” He shoved Annie backward, slamming her against the wall.

She hit so hard her knees buckled. What little air she still had was knocked away.

Claude charged out, shutting the door behind him.

Annie heard the sound of a padlock snicking shut as she slumped sideways.

She became aware of her surroundings with no idea how much time had passed. In the falling darkness, she could barely make out blood dripping down the front of her dress. Tears diluted the blood and she wept.

“Do something, idiot! You can’t just sit here crying.”

Annie proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was indeed an idiot by burying her face in her hands and sobbing her heart out. The tears burned. She swiped at them and flinched from the pain in her blackened eye.

Shuddering, she lifted her battered face from her hands and looked at the dress. It seemed to glow in the dim light, as if the very fires of the devil gave it light. Indecent, vivid red silk with black fringe. No bodice worth mentioning, the front hem cut up nearly to the knees. The garment was horrible and disgusting, and Annie’s shudders deepened. She shouted at the walls of the tiny, solidly locked cabin, “I won’t do it!”

Claude had known before he’d asked that Annie would never wear that sinful dress and sing those bawdy songs. Touching gingerly her throbbing, swollen cheek, Annie pulled her hand away and saw blood. Her lip was split, her nose bleeding. She knew Claude’s fists had been more for his own cruel pleasure than any attempt at coercion.

“Beat me to death if you want,” she yelled at the door. “I will never again perform onstage for you!” She felt strong, righteous. Ready to die for her faith.

Then she thought of Elva. Annie’s elderly accompanist was maybe, right now, being punished because Annie hadn’t fallen in line.

Claude’s cruel threats rang in her ears even with him gone.

For all her utter commitment to refusing the Leveques and singing only her beloved hymns, how could Annie watch Elva be hurt? Could Annie stand on principle while Elva was beaten?

The welts on Annie’s arm, in the perfect shape of Claude Leveque’s viselike hand, along with Annie’s swollen eye and bleeding lip, proved the hateful man knew how to inflict pain. He’d proved he had no compunction in hurting a helpless woman.

Noise outside her prison brought Annie to her feet. He was coming back! Annie was sick to think what the couple would do to the elderly woman who had spent her older years worshipping God with music.

Sick with fear that they’d force Annie to watch Elva being battered, Annie clenched her fists and prayed. God would never agree that Annie should wear that tart’s dress, sing vile, suggestive songs, and flash her legs for drunken men.

But Elva!

Please, Lord, guide me though this dark valley.

A key rattled in the doorway.

Annie braced herself. If she could get past Claude, she would run, find Elva, and get away. Go somewhere, somehow. Throw herself on the mercy of the men in this logging camp—the very ones Claude said would pay to see that dreadful harlot’s gown.

The wooden door of the secluded, one-room shack swung hard and crashed against the wall. Elva fell onto her knees, clutching her chest. “You have to run!” Elva, eyes wild with terror, lifted her head. Annie saw Elva’s face was battered; a cut on her cheek bled freely.

Expecting Claude and Blanche to be right behind the gray-haired woman, Annie rushed forward and dropped to Elva’s side. “Elva, what did they do to you?”

“I heard. . .I heard Claude making plans, awful plans for you. He caught me eavesdropping. He thought he’d knocked me cold, but I lay still and waited until he left. He’d hung the key on a nail, and I stole it and slipped away to set you free.” Elva staggered to her feet, every breath echoed with pain. She stretched out a shaking hand, and Annie saw Elva’s black velvet reticule. The one the sweet pianist, who made Annie’s voice sound as pretty as a meadowlark, carried always. “There’s money. All I’ve saved.” Elva coughed, cutting off her words. She breathed as if it hurt. “T–Take it and go. There’s a wagon. It’s already left, but run, catch it. Ride to town. Enough.” Coughing broke her voice again and Elva’s knees wobbled. She clung tight to Annie. “Enough for one train ticket.”

Annie realized what Elva was saying. “No, I won’t leave you.”

“It’s my heart.” Elva sagged sideways, clutching her chest. Annie couldn’t hold her dead weight, slight though Elva was. They both lowered to the floor. “When Claude landed his first blow, I felt my heart give out. Oh, Annie, the things he threatened for you. The evil, ugly words from a serpent’s mouth. My precious girl. Run. You must run.”

“I won’t leave you. They’ll kill you, Elva.”

“No. My heart. I’ve felt it coming for months and tonight’s the end. They can’t harm me anymore.”

“Elva, don’t talk like that.” Tears wanted to fall, but Annie had no time for such weakness. “You’re all I have!”

“Your father. Go home.”

“He doesn’t want me. You know that.”

Elva’s hand closed over the already bruised place on Annie’s wrist. Elva clearly saw what Annie had already suffered at Claude’s hands. “Go. There’s no time. What they want from you is a fate worse than death.”

Annie gasped. Those words could mean only one thing. She glanced at the indecent dress. A harlot’s dress.

“God is calling me home, my beautiful girl. He’s taking me b–because He knows you’d never leave me. God in heaven is rescuing us both. I’ll go home and so will you. I believe that.”

Annie looked into Elva’s eyes, and even now they clouded over.

“Go. Please. It’s my fault you’re in this place. I thought we’d bring the Lord to these people with your beautiful singing. I convinced you to stay when the Leveques took over. If you stay I will have died for nothing, Sw–Sweet Annie.”

Elva’s grip tightened until Annie nearly cried out in pain. Then as quickly as the spasm had come, it was gone.

And so was Elva. She sank, lifeless, to the floor.

Annie saw the very moment Elva’s spirit left her body—a heartbreaking, beautiful moment, because now Elva was beyond pain.

But Annie wasn’t.

“If you stay I will have died for nothing.”

A loud snap of a twig jerked Annie’s head around. She gazed into the nearby woods surrounding the sequestered shack she’d been locked in. The Leveques were coming.

“What they want from you is a fate worse than death.”

As if God Himself sent lightning to jolt her, Annie clutched Elva’s reticule, leaped to her feet, and ran.

“There’s a wagon. It’s already left, but run, catch it. Ride to town.”

Annie gained the cover of the woods and, without looking back, began moving with painstaking silence.

She heard Claude’s shout of rage when he discovered the cabin door ajar.

Poor Elva. No one to bury her. No one to make her funeral a testimony to her life of faith.

Annie hated herself for running away. It was cowardly. There had to be some way to stay and pay proper respect, see to a decent Christian burial. Every decent part of herself said, “Go back. Face this.”

She kept moving. Elva had insisted on it. Common sense confirmed it. God whispered it in her heart to move, hurry, be silent.

Silence was her only weapon and Annie used it. She’d learned silence in the mountains growing up, slipping up on a deer or an elk. Slipping away from a bear or a cougar.

As much as Annie had loved her mountain home, she’d never learned to hunt. Pa fed the family. But she loved the woods and was skilled in their use.

Heading for the trail to town, she was careful to get close enough to not lose her way but stay off to the side.

Not long after she’d started out, she saw Claude storming down the trail toward town. He’d catch the wagon Elva spoke of long before she did. And, she hoped, insist on searching it. Once Claude assured himself that Annie wasn’t there, she’d have her chance.

Annie felt the bite of the cool night air. She heard an owl hoot in the darkness. The rustle of the leaves covered tiny sounds she might make as she eased along. She knew the trail. She knew the night. She knew the woods.

All of it was filled with treachery.

Go back to my Blogoversary Giveaway #1 for an opportunity to enter to win a copy of Cowboy Christmas straight from Mary Connealy. And stick around, because in the next month or so, there may be another opportunity to win a copy from my mailbox to yours complements of Barbour Books.

As of yet I have loved everything I have ever read by Mary Connealy. Never fear, I have started this one and a review is coming soon. At ten pages in, I can already tell you I'm dying for AppleBlossom to be settled so I can finish this book that I'm already enthralled with!

Blogoversary Giveaway #1

The first of the many books I have for a giveaway for you is Cowboy Christmas by Mary Connealy from Barbour Books. On September 21st, come back to read the first chapter. Review to come soon! A winner of an autographed copy will be chosen on October 18th.

What is your favorite Christmas memory?

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Q&A with Mary Connealy

Q&A

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc (July 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1602601429
• ISBN-13: 978-1602601420
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches

Is the Montana Marriage Series for those who loved the Lassoed in Texas Series?

Yes, more romantic comedy with cowboys. I'm being branded by Barbour, and dagnabbit, they really used a red hot iron. I had no idea until the lasso settled around my neck!

What is your favorite scene from Montana Rose? The Husband Tree? Wildflower Bride?

Montana Rose: My favorite scene is, I think when Cassie gets dragged by the horse, Buck, who has never forgiven her for spooking him the first day she came to live at the ranch.
She's trying to hide this fact from Red and when he sees her face all scratched up he goes ballistic. And Cassie doesn't want him to take all her chores away, she wants to help. Then, when he's in full blow rage, he gets real close to her and says, "Say it, Cass honey. Say that awful mean name you're thinking about me right now."
He's trying to get her to stand up for herself and fight back, but she's so obedient she just can't. But oh, she comes so close.

The Husband Tree: The scene that comes to mind is the first night Silas is at Belle's ranch and he's eating at their table, with Belle and her four daughters, and the girls, who have only always just said anything they wanted, very anti-male, spout these dreadful things and Belle realizes how she's poisoned their minds. And Silas is terrified of what he's gotten into.

Wildflower Bride: My favorite scene there might be when Tom Linscott first meets the heroine, Glowing Sun, a white woman raised by an Indian tribe when they find her with all her family dead. Tom grabs her to get her away from his vicious horse and she pulls knocks him to the ground and puts a knife to his throat.
Tom looks at the hero and says, "Does she pull a knife on every man she meets?"
The hero thinks a minute then says, "So far."

How would you relate your writing experience and research to some Creative Madness?

I think there is a strangeness to a writer. It's not really a very NORMAL pastime to sit alone and make stuff up....for thousands of pages. It's like nuclear powered daydreaming. So creative madness might be a very fair way to describe it.

Tell us about your blog and participation in other blogs...
I've got three blogs.
Seekerville
Petticoats & Pistols
My Blog
I love them all madly and spend waaaay to much time on them.

What is something that you have never told anyone in an author interview?

Wow, I can't even think of anything. I'm such a blabber mouth. I tell every single thing I know, then I start making stuff up. I doubt I have a single secret.

What is the one thing that you want to leave readers of Montana Rose pondering over?

Well, tough question. The first thing that comes to mind is the whole concept of a wife being submissive, because I deal with that a lot in the story. But at the end of the book is a moment I really like where Cassie talks about how allowing her first husband to so totally dominate her was a sin. It was weakness. And of course she behaved perfectly at all times and the people she's talking to tell her it wasn't a sin. But she talks about how sin is sin. Turning away from her faith, letting her husband be cruel and calling it submission was weak and its own kind of sin. And she doesn't have to break a commandment to fail to be the best person she can be, to miss opportunities to live for God. And when she failed at that it was a sin, just enough of a sin to make her know she needs salvation, everybody does.

For those of us, who cannot wait for more from our dear Mary Connealy, please tell us about your next planned project...

I've got a CHRISTMAS ROMANCE. I just love Christmas novels and I'm so thrilled that Barbour is letting me write one. I comes out in September. YAY! Another western historical romantic comedy, not part of a series. But a lot of fun.

Cowboy Christmas

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Barbour Books (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1602601453
• ISBN-13: 978-1602601451

What can you tell us desperate for more about Cowboy Christmas?
Elijah Walker 's lost his father at the hands of a deceitful woman. The one thing he can't abide is lies.
Citified Annette Talbot is on the run from something and once she's home she's determined to stand and face danger. Hopefully, she can stand behind her tough Wyoming rancher father. It's easier to be brave with her pa's gun drawn.
Her father fails her but Elijah can't ignore a damsel in distress. But it doesn't take Elijah long to find out Annette is lying about something. Because he's powerfully drawn to the little liar, he turns his back on her, feeling contempt for her, and for himself.
Which leaves Annette her first perfect chance to stand up and face trouble bravely.
And that gets her into terrible trouble.
Annette nearly dies trying to escape that trouble. Walker can't help protecting her, especially since God pretty much dropped Annette straight into his unwilling arms.
But helping her isn't the same as trusting her, and that he will never do.
As Annette and Walker fight their attraction and danger draws near, Christmas approaches. The bickering twosome will get one special chance to heal old heartbreaks and follow their own star.

Who do you think your number one fan is if you had to name one?

You know it might be a cliche but I think it has to be my husband. He's really been so great and encouraging about my writing. I suspect it's because he's hoping I make a fortune and he's being nice so I'll share--but whatever his motives, he's a great fan.

• Mass Market Paperback: 480 pages I have a copy, and it's really TRADE not MMP!
  
• Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1602604185
• ISBN-13: 978-1602604186
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches

For people who have come to love your fiction set in the western historical environment, how do the adventures of Nosy in Nebraska differ? Will it attract the same or a different brand of readers?

About Nosy in Nebraska, I said Barbour Branded me (ouch!) and they did but I don't really think of myself as a historical western romantic comedy writer as I think of myself as a romantic comedy writer. So to go for the comedy in a contemporary cozy mystery isn't that big a leap...in my own fevered head. It may be for readers?

When you entered the world of writing, did you expect to write some cozy mysteries?

When I got my first book published I have 20 finished novels on my computer. That's 20 completely full length adult novels. I had children's books, middle grade books, poetry, plays. I don't count those in the twenty. I've written everything. Police procedurals, serial killers, sweet contemporary, suspenseful contemporary, gothic, just everything. So a cozy wasn't that scary but I did have to figure out what a cozy was. I really didn't quite understand it. And my editor told me that book two in Nosy in Nebraska isn't really a cozy, it's a suspense.

She told me too late to fix it though and she let it go through. Bless her HEART.

Why a mouse?

Two reasons for the mouse.
1) I'm terrified of them, so I could use that to make Carrie's mouse phobia real
2) I found out Algona, IA is the home of the world's largest Cheeto. It's true. Google it.
I thought, you know what? People will just use any excuse they can think of to hold a festival. So the mouse wasn't that much of a stretch.

Click on any of the cover images to go to buy/preorder a copy!!!