WEDNESDAY WESTERN ROUND-UP!!! CELIA YEARY!!

YEE-HAW!  We’ve rounded up another ace high series by author Celia Yeary!! I love me a great family series and Ms. Yeary serves one up Texas style with the Cameron family. You’re sure to be hooked with the first story and the next two won’t let ya down! So come on ‘round the fire and look these over then head on out grab ‘em up!

And don’t forget to read to the end where Celia provides a gander into the future of these families! It’s a fun look into an author’s crystal ball. The people of Texas better hold onto their ten gallon hats with the new generation!

She wasn’t a fit mother… So said the county judge who hired Buck Cameron to retrieve his little daughter. But when Buck finally locates the pretty mother and child, he finds the claim very hard to believe. Now, he faces a dilemma. Should he obey the order? Or should he defy the judge and rescue Marilee and her child from isolation? She’d been banished… Rejected and abandoned by her father, Marilee Weston used the pain of betrayal to survive. Now, she needs a way out of the forest, where she and her daughter had lived for five years. But the towering pines and fear of the unknown imprisoned her. How could she begin a new life for herself and five-year-old daughter? Will the alluring stranger free her, or prove to be even more dangerous?

KIRSTEN’S THOUGHTS:  TEXAS BLUE is a tender story of a woman who battles her own fears of what she knows can be a heartless world and the man who helps her realize her own strength and just how much fight she has in her. From the very first pages, I admired Marilee. Though extremely young when deserted by her father and left to raise a baby, born from a violent attack, she has pluck. She desires the best for her daughter, Josie, and is determined to see she is raised a happy child, and to look beyond her own fears to see her daughter has what she needs.  And you just can’t find a better hero than Buck Cameron. A man who encourages Marilee to find her strength even though it might cost him her and his heart in the end. Honestly, I got a bit miffed at Marilee ‘cause I’d have snatched Buck up and held on tight, and of course it all works out in the end, but whoo-eee is it ever a ride.

TEXAS BLUE AMAZON      TEXAS BLUE NOOK

After two years, Jo King’s life as a widow abruptly ends when her husband returns home to Austin. Unable to understand her angry and bitter husband, she accepts a call from the New Mexico Territory to meet her dying birth father whom she knows nothing about. Her plan to escape her husband goes awry when he demands to travel with her.
Dalton King, believing lies his Texas Ranger partner tells him about Jo, seethes with hatred toward his wife. Now he must protect Jo from his partner’s twisted mind, while sorting out the truth. Jo’s bravery and loyalty convince him she’s innocent. But can they regain the love and respect they once shared?

KIRSTEN’S THOUGHTS:  TEXAS PROMISE was my favorite of the stories. It was the first one I read, and I read it in two nights (only because I had to work).  Then I read it again after reading TEXAS BLUE and it was more fun, but a bit heartbreaking,  to watch the children from TEXAS BLUE grow, and the darling, precocious girl and the boy who asked “if he could keep her” married.  But Dalton isn’t the carefree boy he was.  After being left for dead and struggling back to life and through horrendous pain to make it back to Jo, only to believe she no longer wanted him, he’s turned into a bitter hard man.  Jo, much like her mother Marilee, is a character you instantly like and connect with and cheer on, as a warm, loving woman with an inner strength that has seen her through hard times and heartbreak.  I loved that Jo was still as precocious as the five-year-old who stole Buck’s , and my, heart in TEXAS BLUE. Still a tomboy at heart.

There was just something about Dalton that even at his hardest and meanest I just still loved this character. It was so touching watching these two wonderful people work through all the lies, heartbreak and a dark threat from Jo’s past to find their way back to each other.

TEXAS PROMISE AMAZON    TEXAS PROMISE NOOK

At a Governor’s Ball in Austin, Texas, True Lee Cameron meets suave Sam Deleon. Before the night is out, she transforms from the coddled and protected younger sister to a woman in love. Reality crashes down when she accidentally learns her new husband has deceived her. Daring to disobey him, she follows Sam to the oilfields and determines to live wherever he does. Has she made a mistake? Will she give up and return home where she can make her own rules?

KIRSTEN’S THOUGHTS:  TEXAS TRUE is a fantastic story, sometimes just as gritty as the oilfield, of two people swept away by love and appearances and then have to face the reality of what love really requires when real life intrudes on the dream. Although coddled and protected True Cameron is a young woman I liked from TEXAS PROMISE and continued to admire her in her story.  She comes from a loving family, and wants the same thing for herself. Her determination to follow her husband to the oilfields and push up her sleeves and do what it takes to survive there, to show her husband she could, made her every bit as likable as her sister Jo.  As she takes on more struggles moving to Sam’s ranch, taking on his sister’s children and learning of the secrets that haunt him you really watch True bear up with each new challenge and grow into a strong woman who can stand on her own, even as you hope she and Sam’s love can bear up just as much and bring them to their HEA.  And though at times you’d like to thump Sam upside the head, like Dalton, he’s a hero you hope can get past his inner demons and hold tight to True and their love.

I also found the history in this story extremely fascinating. I didn’t know much of the history of the oilfields in Texas and Celia describes the hard life and hard work on the oilfields so well you can almost smell the black gold and see the shanties, tents, and shacks that made up the “town” where the workers and their families made their homes.

TEXAS TRUE AMAZON   TEXAS TRUE NOOK

All three stories are balanced between the challenges each faces as they work towards love and the dangers they face from outside forces that threaten to destroy them and tear them apart. The history Celia weaves through made each an enjoyable history lesson, as well, and I felt a connection to Texas and her people.

In each story the characters are so real you’ll just fall in love with them.  The Cameron family ties are portrayed in such a way that although the sisters, Jo and True, don’t share many pages in each of their stories their love and support for the other comes through loud and clear and helps each get through their individual struggles. It is their family bonds and the example of their parents that encourages each woman to accept her worth and not take their worth or love for granted. The secondary characters in each story are vivid and real and help complete the stories without detracting from the man and woman at the heart of each.  Celia Yeary pens such wonderful characters and their stories you just hate to see them end, and for an added treat today Celia provided a look at the future generations of Camerons, Deleones, and Kings, so the stories continue…

CELIA SAYS:

Don’t think I’m a little off, but I had so many characters in my Texas books, I made a genealogy chart to keep them straight. I’ve discovered I love to write a series, and it’s much easier to begin a new book when I have ready-made characters in my stories.

Unless I get a serious mental block, I have a list of characters for future novels or novellas:

~*~Lee Cameron King–he appeared in Texas Blue as a small boy who picked his nose and rode imaginary horses around the yard. I’d like to make him an early 20th Century entrepreneur  during the oil boom in Texas–a wildcatter, a risk taker, a rich man with money to make money, a tough businessman who has a big sense of humor. I’d have him run into a real buzz-saw, a serious woman who is investigating oil company monopolies for a New York newspaper.

~*~Jackson Rene Deleon–he was the baby boy in Texas True. I see Jackson grown up and the heir to the great Deleon fortune. At a young age, he becomes the head of an empire consisting of ranching in Texas, gold and silver mines in Colorado, and shipping lines out of Houston. I’d have him meet a titled British lady whom he must convince to marry him and live in South Texas on the ranch–the headquarters for the Texas Star Corporation his father formed.

~*~Lacy Deleon–she was the little niece of Sam Deleon in Texas True, born in the Flats in Austin, a prostitution area where she and her little brother, Antonio, were born and lived. When True Cameron married Sam Deleon, she found the small girl and boy and brought them home, causing a huge problem. But True was determined to raise them as their own children. Lacy, now grown into a proper young lady, discovers her lurid birthplace and challenges the local government to do something. She would meet a brash, young attorney/senator and entice him to help her.

~*~Antonio Deleon–Lacy’s little wild brother in Texas True. He was a hellion as a kid, although lovable and good-hearted. But he didn’t understand the word “no.” I see him grown and sowing too many wild oats and getting in trouble. I’d like him to meet a strong-willed female rancher who challenges him to straighten up and learn to be a man.

~*~Laura Lynn Paxton–Jo King’s half-niece in Texas Promise .  Beauty Laura Lynn has a horrible past she knows little about but sets out to find the burial place of her prostitution mother in New Mexico. In doing so, she hires a strong rough tracker to help her.

~*~Alexander King–son of Dalton and Jo King in Texas Promise. I have high hopes for the darling child. Just look at his name. He has it all–handsome, rich, smart, educated, adored by the entire family…and he takes it all for granted. Until…what? His story will require much thought.

Celia

What? Ya say ya’d love to read one of Celia’s stories, but ya just don’t have time for one of those full-length jobbers.  Well prepare to be just as happy as cat with cream, cause Ms. Yeary has solved your problem! She’s published some Dime Store Novels for 99cents each!! Why ya can’t get a cup of Cookie’s coffee for that! And while they’re shorter stories her characters and stories are just as tip of the star as her full-length books!

But really folks I’d give the Cameron series five thumbs up if I had that many thumbs, ya just won’t be sorry layin’ your money down cause this is one series you’re gonna read and read again.