The Arkansas River claims the starring role in a recently released romance e-book set in the Wichita area. Redeeming River Rancher, a fictional farm foreclosure story, leads a five-book series entitles “Landscapes of Mercy.” Author Cindy M. Amos writes nature into her storylines from a background in field ecology and endangered species conservation. The financially threatened farm in the vicinity of Maize in rural Sedgwick County becomes the perfect stage for this better-late-than-never tale of redemption that tugs at the heart.
A Sedgwick County resident for sixteen years, Ms. Amos began writing fiction while working as the volunteer coordinator for the Great Plains Nature Center. After almost ten years of service, the compelling call to write eclipsed her community service and she resigned to give it her full-time effort. In July, her first novel made its debut on Amazon with a small publisher, Forget Me Not Romances, an imprint of Winged Publications out of Surprise, Arizona.
In Redeeming River Rancher, readers will discover the local landscape includes a familiar restaurant in Old Town, a feed mercantile in Maize, and the celebration of Wichita’s party on the prairie, Riverfest. Highlighting close ties between man and the land, the series’ recurring theme involves a landscape feature that becomes analogous to the romantic couple’s relationship. For this debut book, that key feature is the Arkansas River, a connective artery that binds the struggling rancher to his farmland—and eventually, the heroine.
True-to-life aspects of a Kansas working ranch are rendered from the author’s twenty-five years of experience on the Amos family’s fifth generation heritage ranch in the Flint Hills of Morris County. Even the book’s cover boasts an actual weather-worn gate along Old Highway Four with a storm-darkened Kansas sky brewing trouble in the background. A bouquet of lazy daisies tucked in the gate hints of romance for the lonely rancher.
Other geographic locations in the series will include Golden, Colorado, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Pawnee Rock, Kansas, and Lake Okeechobee, Florida. “There’s a green take-away for readers in each book,” claims the author. Wholesome and inspiring with an infusion of regional flora and fauna, Amos considers the sub-genre “Envir-Romance,” which lends these plot-driven adventures a nature-based authenticity.
Landscapes of Mercy Book One, Redeeming River Rancher, can be reviewed on Amazon.com through the author’s website, http://cindymamos.wixsite.com/natureink.
Enjoyable reading. Lots of nature sightings and story of Hope!