Snow Angel
Noah Wesley, batching it in the mountains near Juneau, Alaska, in 1897, is startled when he finds a young woman huddled in the snow at his cabin door. Drawn to the gold fields as she flees her shady adoptive parents, Elizabeth has been trying to find a guide over the mountains. After reviving her, Noah offers a bargain in which they will instead look for gold on his own property. Then Joe Brandon appears, a detective who previously “took advantage” of Elizabeth, and she evades him this time by joining a group of miners headed for the Klondike. Noah, smitten with Elizabeth from the first, sets off on the difficult overmountain path to rescue her from both her nemesis and herself.
Most chapters end with letters written by a different detective to Jane, Elizabeth’s birth mother, who hired him after being made to give up her out-of-wedlock child. I found the letter device a bit overused, as some of them were repetitive. However, Carie includes some good scenes in the story, notably the one where Noah confides his love to Elizabeth. Other sections need refining, like the über-Hollywood ending. Overall, it’s a generally satisfactory Christian romance by a first-time author.
