Rainbow Reviews

BOOK BLURB:
K.C. Fontero left Albuquerque for Texas in the wake of a bitter break-up, headed for a teaching and research post-doc at the University of Texas, Austin. With a doctorate in sociology and expertise in American white supremacist groups, she’s well on her way to an established academic life. But the past has a way of catching up with you and as K.C. spends a summer helping her grandfather on his central Texas farm, her past shows up in the form of her ex, Melissa Crown, an Albuquerque lawyer who left K.C. for another woman three years earlier.

Melissa’s younger sister Megan has gone missing ~ she’s hooked up with a man Melissa suspects is part of an underground white supremacist group and Melissa needs K.C.’s help to find her and hopefully bring her out of the movement. K.C. knows she has the knowledge and contacts to track the group. She knows that in the interests of public service, she’d be helping law enforcement, as well. What she doesn’t know is how far into her past she’ll have to go in order to find not only Megan, but herself as well.

Working to locate the group without alerting members’ suspicions, K.C. finds herself drawn to Megan’s friend and neighbor, Sage Crandall, a photographer who challenges K.C.’s attempts to keep her heart ensconced in the safety of research and analysis. Confronted with her growing feelings for Sage while unraveling her complicated past with Melissa, K.C. delves into the racist and apocalyptic beliefs of the mysterious group, but the deeper she goes, the greater the danger she faces.

BOOK REVIEW:
Sociologist professor K.C. Fontero specializes in the investigation and study of neo-Nazi, white-supremacist bigotry. Spending a terribly hot Central Texas summer helping out with manual labor on her grandfather's ranch, K.C. is beyond dismayed when her ex-lover, Melissa, inexplicably appears at the ranch. Melissa's younger sister, Megan, has taken up with a neo-Nazi and begun to question her sister's lesbian orientation, and virtually disappeared with only mysterious occasional phone calls to connect her to her family life. K.C.'s heart wars against getting involved with her ex-girlfriend, but the circumstances involving what may well be a potential white-supremacy cult with criminal plans awakens her determination to investigate.

Author Andi Marquette demonstrates a facile gift for descriptive imagery which borders on the poetic and inspires the reader to stop periodically simply to savor the beauty of a phrase. Sensory perceptions are awakened, right down to tactile feeling, and the reader feels she is present on the scene as a silent, invisible, observer. I found this a captivating, realistic, and heart-wrenching novel, deep in excellent emotional characterizations and rich in the background of lesbian life and partnerships. The author's attention to detail and research shows in the delineated descriptions of the cult-like white supremacist groups. Escalating suspense keeps readers riveted to the page and results in a thoroughly satisfying read.

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