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In the winter of 1925, Alice Devlin travels by train from New York City to Saranac Lake, a tuberculosis cure center in the Adirondacks. Since her husband, Joe, can't afford two train tickets, he follows by car. When the car breaks down, Joe continues on foot in the snow. He is rescued and cared for by a man and his wife, but suffers frostbite in his feet. After he recuperates enough to travel, he continues for hundreds of miles across a mountain pass, wearing borrowed snowshoes.
A mysterious Mr. Bingham has given Joe a reference for a job as a mechanic at a nearby exclusive club, and has also loaned him an expensive raccoon coat. Joe is thankful for the employment, but it doesn't pay enough to cover Alice's expenses. He takes a second job repairing cars for bootleggers, and ends up running bootleg whiskey.
Mountain Shadows portrays love, sacrifice, and courage in an appealing manner and without preachiness. The story includes interesting particulars about life as a tubercular patient and the stringent discipline of the treatment. I also enjoyed the details of the bootleggers' illegal occupation.
Brooks describes her settings vividly, and her characters are well-developed and likeable. True-to-life events and emotions kept me turning pages until I reached the sad, but satisfying, ending. Mountain Shadows is a debut novel, and I will definitely look forward to more books by Patricia Reiss Brooks.
Reviewed by Marie DisBrow
for The Road to Romance
December 13, 2004
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