Virtual Review Tour & Giveaway for Dreaming of Laughing Hawk by Linda Katmarian

Welcome to my stop on the Virtual Review Tour for Dreaming of Laughing Hawk by Linda Katmarian.  Please leave a comment or question to let her know you stopped by.  Linda will award a digital copy of Dreaming of Laughing Hawk to one commenter at each stop on her tour, please make sure you leave your email address with your comment.  You can follow her tour here, he more often you comment, the better you chances of winning. 

Dreaming of Laughing Hawk

by Linda Katmarian

Publisher:  Scheherazade Bookworks

Release Date: January 17, 2013

ISBN: 978-0988297203

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Buy Link:  Amazon Print │ Kindle 

Book Description: 

In 1964 Elizabeth Leigh is looking forward to college, escape from her unhappy home, and the fulfillment of her dreams. Adventure. Love. Her place in the sun. On a restless afternoon, she leaves school early and discovers her mother is packing to run off with a lover, abandoning Elizabeth and her stepfather. Worse, she learns her mother has squandered the college money her grandfather left her.

A fortuitous invitation from her cousin Melina to come to Los Angeles rescues her from an uncertain future. In Los Angeles, Elizabeth finds security in the embrace of her aunt’s family and is introduced to the man who soon becomes her fiancé, Collin Greenslade, an ambitious, up-and-coming real estate developer. Life could not be more perfect.

When her cousin’s boyfriend, a civil rights activist, has his Thunderbird vandalized in Mississippi, he enlists his roommate, Mark Laughing Hawk, to tow his car back home. Melina insists that she and Elizabeth should come along for the ride, but what starts as a fun romp across the country becomes a journey of the soul that complicates love and endangers lives.

Dreaming of Laughing Hawk explores the desire for love, power, and sense of purpose and the lengths we will go to attain them.

Excerpt:

Elizabeth

At her insistence, James had driven her by Grandfather's old farm one day. She had claimed curiosity, but she had gone expecting to rediscover something. The place had been burnt to the ground, her childhood memories reduced to a blackened foundation and a dingy clutter of outer buildings.

The image of leaving that spectacle of ruin was burnt in her mind—she and James driving down the gravel road. Weeds and the low-hanging branches of unpruned trees swooshed and thumped against the car while gravel popped loudly under the car's tires. As the car had bumped along, a flock of startled black birds exploded out of the brush. For a moment, they fluttered and swirled about like pieces of charred paper in the draft of a flame and then they were gone. The mind could play such tricks. 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Author Linda Katmarian grew up in the Midwest and graduated with a Master’s Degree in French literature from Illinois State University. She has studied under Sol Stein, prolific author and former owner of Stein & Day publishing company in New York, and Louella Nelson, an experienced romance writer and teacher of fiction writing. In 2012, after a long career as a technical writer, Linda committed herself to writing fiction full time. She lives in Southern California. DREAMING OF LAUGHING HAWK is her debut novel.

Author page:   http://amazon.com/author/lindakatmarian

Website:  http://www.lindakatmarian.com

Blog:  http://www.scheherazade-thewritinglife.blogspot.com/

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/LindaKatmarian

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorlindakatmarian

My Review

A young woman trying to discover who she is, two young men from different backgrounds in love with the same woman, and one trip to the South during the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement all play key roles in Linda Katmarian’s stellar debut Dreaming of Laughing Hawk.   A well paced romantic suspense, Ms. Katmarian’s characters, experiences and the situations they became involved in, captured my attention from the very first page.  Ms. Katmarian’s depiction and grasp of America’s changing culture during this time and place in history also contributed greatly to my appreciation of her story. 

Planning for her life after graduation, Elizabeth Leigh is surprised to arrive home and discover her mother packing to leave with her new lover.  Her mother’s plans of leaving Elizabeth behind with her stepfather, adds to Elizabeth’s confusion.  Finding out her grandfather’s inheritance, left for her college education, has also been lost as a result of her mother’s poor choices, is the most bitter discovery of Elizabeth’s day.  Taking her stepfather’s advice, and visiting her aunt in California, will change Elizabeth’s life.

Ms. Katmarian’s development of Elizabeth’s character, and her journey to discover who she will eventually be, is the central point of this story.  As Elizabeth meets two men; Collin, a rich, successful and white businessman, and Mark Laughing Hawk, an Indian from the Dakotas, who’s a friend of her cousin’s boyfriend and studying to become a doctor, she’s faced with the choice of two completely different futures. 

Ms. Katmarian does a good job developing both men in the story; we get to know Collin, who’s not quite what he seems and who makes questionable choices, and we get to know Mark or “Hawk”, a man at a crossroads between the past of his people, his own personal future, and the political and social upheavals taking place.  Ms. Katmarian’s secondary characters are also well developed and contribute to the story and to our knowledge of the three central characters. 

Will Elizabeth choose Colin or Hawk when it’s time to decide about her future?  Will her choice have lasting consequences on all three of their futures?  You’ll have to read Dreaming of Laughing Hawk to find out.  I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading more of Ms. Katmarian’s work.

My Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

FTC Disclosure:  I received a complimentary copy of this book as a part of a book tour in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Don't forget to leave a comment or question to let Linda know you stopped by.  Linda will award a digital copy of Dreaming of Laughing Hawk to one commenter at each stop on her tour, please make sure you leave your email address with your comment.  You can follow her tour here, he more often you comment, the better you chances of winning.