THIRD TIME AROUND – BOOK 4: CAJUN COWBOYS FAMILY SAGA ***
GEORGIA AND HANK'S STORY: Georgia's wedding day comes to a halt when she catches her fiancé in a clench with her maid of honor, but when she's ready to marry her father's "pick of the litter", an untimely attraction to a Cajun cowboy with a healing touch catches her off guard. Once word's out that she's about to ditch her fiancé for one of the Cajuns next door, Georgia's father lets the man know that marrying his daughter is not an option. But giving Hank Broussard an ultimatum is like waving a red flag at a bull. The only thing that crosses his mind is "challenge accepted." The Harrisons have been thorns in the Broussards' sides for generations and time has done nothing to dissipate the feud. But soon, Hank learns that the woman he believed to be spoiled and rich is anything but, and what he discovers about her is disconcerting. He's still grieving the loss of his beloved wife while learning to function as a single father, and Georgia is like an angel sent by God to lift the two of them out of the doldrums. The question is, will Georgia marry a man her father denigrates or settle for Parker Barclay III and relive the past?***
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Hank Broussard, the hero in this story, is also a faith healer. Cajun traiteurs (treaters) have been ministering to the ill and the injured around the bayous since the eighteenth century when the Acadians migrated to southwestern Louisiana from France by way of Nova Scotia. Some traiteurs treat broad ranges of illnesses, while others specialize. The problem with Hank is that he lost faith in the gift of healing that was passed down to him from his grandmother when he failed to alleviate the pain of his dying wife, so in a sense he also failed his young son. So this story is also about restoring hope. The quote by C. S. Lewis below pretty much describes our still-grieving hero at the opening of the “To love is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give your heart to no one. Avoid entanglements; lock it up in a casket. But in that safe, dark, airless casket it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable.” -- C. S. Lewis ***
CULTURAL AND SPIRITUAL ISSUES:
In this series cultural and/or spiritual issues are involved. However, my goal is not to convert anyone to anything but to convince readers that Georgia and Hank belong together.
LEVEL OF SENSUALITY: If you're looking for steamy romances you'll find instead sexy stories in a non-graphic way. My goal is to create romances that feature courageous, self-assured heroes with endearing flaws and the gutsy women who capture their hearts, women for whom these unsuspecting cowboys would lay down their lives.The series is set in southwest Louisiana's prairie country where in 1765 my French-Acadian ancestral grandfather, Joseph Beausoleil Broussard, led 240 Acadian exiles who refused to pledge allegiance to the British crown from Nova Scotia to Louisiana. Joseph Broussard and six members of the party secured a deal with cattleman, Jean-Antoine-Bernard Dautrieve, to settle land grants on Bayou Teche and tend his livestock for part of the profit, and by the early 1800s the Acadians were major cattle ranchers. Among them was my great-great grandfather, Amand Broussard, who, with his brother Pierre, drove herds of cattle from Bayou Teche to New Orleans, a 150-mile trip that required drovers to make numerous swims and fight swamps, bogs and thick woods, a tough journey that took two weeks.
