Review: The forces of nature
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 21, 2013
Luba Palionny is a new writer form San Francisco whose life is consumed by philanthropy and non-profit organizations. It seems this is her first venture into writing ands she definitely has a knack for it. If this book is her introduction then it seems her genre is to be Romance stories.Katia Giselle Hawthorn is a loner who has just moved into a room in a renovated Victorian house in San Francisco. She is a beautiful young virgin who prefers being to herself and with nature. After settling in to her new abode she is ready to start her first teaching job – a first grade class – and she finds that she loves teaching but the school year passes quickly. For a vacation she rents a little white cabin on a cliff up in Northern California in the redwoods and stops by the post office to pick up the key as instructed. There she sees a handsome, hunky blond man who is very distant – but very appealing.Jump into the other character’s description and we discover that John Mulligan is the man in the post office and that his family has been in the tiny town for generations (the cabin Kate rents belongs to them), John is a loner also, having been hurt in the past by a woman who played him and caused him debts of over $100,000: he has no intention of being burned again, so despite the fact that this new girl in the cabin is beautiful he shuts down. He fills in at the market and is a fisherman who runs fishing excursions for tourists. He simply wants to spend the rest of his life alone.Kate settles into her nature lover’s cabin, goes into town to get supplies, and sees John again, running the market. They both have visceral responses but deny them. Kate signs up for a fishing excursion and of course once again is with John – this time alone out on the ocean because no one else showed up for the trip. The electricity is still there but not acted upon. Then nature turns angry with a storm, Kate’s car fails in front of the store, John tows her home, and a falling tree blocks his truck. The two loners are together and how a slip in the shower leads to a romantic end is the completion of the story.Palionny is unafraid to use the language that is appropriate for scenes of lust and that is refreshing in a short novella. She leaves us with fine images of loners becoming lovers and paces her story very much like natural forces bring people together. Though there is a need for an editor to clean the syntax and the spelling the story is strong enough to keep that from distracting. It is a fine start. Grady Harp, November 13