Bound Through the Ashes by Danelle Nelson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Time travel, Western, Romance
Lorena Durrell is a 28 year old single woman living in Alaska, working at a job she hates. She has enough one day, quits her job and heads to Arizona for a vacation to visit her grandparents and the home she left 15 years ago. Lorena goes to visit the Montezuma Well alone, looking forward to having a nice hike and taking some great pictures that she can bring back and show her grandparents. She makes her way over to the historic cliff dwellings and as she wanders in to have a closer look, she meets an old Indian woman.
“This is not your time, you are needed elsewhere. Young child, I have seen you in my dreams. I have seen you in a time far away. The Mountain Spirits have come to me, they have showed me your life. The life you have yet to live.”
The old woman begins to chant around a fire and the flames begin to grow and change. Lorena, unable to escape, is throw into the fire and becomes consumed by it. She awakens to being tied across a horse and instantly believes she has been kidnapped. The Indian man who has her explains that she is in the year 1826, he provides her with new clothes and burns what she arrived in. A group of bandits come with evil intentions on their mind. A young man shows up and saves Lorena from unspeakable crimes and most likely death. Alexandre Castro is a 22 year old Cattle rancher who has everything he could ask for but a wife. Alexandre takes Lorena to Tucson where she realizes that she has in fact been sent back in time. While she tries to come to terms with her situation and how to get back to her own time, she and Alexandre get closer and closer.
“I had searched for a companion my entire life, but I was too blind to see the man standing in front of me when the time came. I couldn’t help but to be thankful that I was getting a second chance, hopefully to do it right. I had someone who understood me, appreciated me, and loved me. Maybe the reason I hadn’t found someone before was because Alexandre and I were destined, as the Old Woman had stated. I usually didn’t believe in destiny, but I had never felt more alive in my life, or more welcomed and wanted.”
Lorena must discover her purpose here and decide if she is to stay in 1826 with the man she loves or return to her own time and family.
This book does contains several sexual interludes and sexual violence, it is not appropriate for all readers. This was an okay read but I felt it could have been better. I did enjoy the romantic story line it portrayed. The time travel aspect of the plot was a bit unrealistic however. There is no way a person who has never rode a horse would be able to just jump on one and get moving without any problems other than saddle sore. PITA, cow tipping, minefield, Chapstick, really?! Lorena needed to make more of an effort to fit in. I don’t believe that people would just not notice how different she speaks and acts, or just accept that she is from “Connecticut”. Lorena never even thought up a back story, as a cover, she just thought that people wouldn’t ask questions about where you come from or who your family is? Women are treated much differently then than they are now and I feel there could have been more included on this. The book should have included Lorena struggling to fit in such as riding a horse, falling off maybe or just not getting the horse to move, it going in the wrong direction, or out of control. Using the cook stove, she mentions not knowing how to cook on it but go further with it, burn some bread or something. Overall the story was cute and I am intrigued as to what is next in store for Alexandre and Lorena.
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