After ten years in the Army and four overseas deployments, Declan Hanover is ready for life away from a military base. Sweetwater, Oregon, a sleepy coastal town, seems like the perfect place to start over. His plan is to work out a deal with his brothers and the bank to let him keep the estate they’ve inherited, Shadow Hill. But he wasn’t prepared for Leah Baron, whose family lost everything to his father’s cons—including the house Declan intends to make his own…

Leah thinks Declan is just like his conman father. He possesses a bad boy charm that makes her heart pound, but that doesn’t mean she can trust him. All she wants is to get close to him so she can get her house back. But Declan has other ideas. He doesn’t mind being in close proximity to Leah—as long as it’s in the bedroom.

The Good Book says: ” . . . the sins of the father are visited on the children, often to the fourth generation.” And when reading such a story as this, one can fully accept that there are many in life who must live in the shadow of an unprincipled parent whose crimes against individuals and communities seemingly are never forgotten. So it is with three brothers who have returned to their hometown to claim an inheritance left them by their paternal grandmother and the flack and upset their arrival brings out in the open. The tension in the story is precipitated by the encounter between Declan Hanover and the woman whose goal in life is to find crimes that link the sons with the father, proving that they have inherited their dad’s penchant for evil-doing. Leah, however, is just as much held prisoner by her dad’s anger as Marc Baron’s obsession with Charlie Hanover has overtaken everything else else in her life. That her attraction with Declan is a problem is apparent from the start.

This is a marvelous look at a community that is fractured by old and painful memories, by the anger spawned and nurtured by one man, at a family of brothers who have had to develop some fairly sophisticated emotional mechanisms for dealing with the intrusive actions of others, who have had to work all their lives to forgive their dad, accept their mother’s death, and try to find their own path. It is also about the power of love, the love of an honorable man for a woman whose integrity and inner strengths are often hidden beneath her not-so-healthy efforts to protect her dad from himself.

HelenKay Dimon knows how to write really, really good stories and this novel is no exception. It is set in contemporary America, smack dab in the beautiful and awe imspiring Northwest country of Oregon, and telling a story that is right out of human experience, one that is far too common. Yet throughout there is a sense that the goodness of people has a chance to triumph over the darkness of unreasonable anger, that Leah and Declan have a very good chance of finding their way to one another for longer than a brief “hook-up.” It’s the kind of story that is deeply emotional and doesn’t back away from probing old pain. It is that honesty that makes it a very compelling read.

Dimon’s fans will like this book and it is the first of a series of books featuring each of the brothers. Those who like stories about family relationships and the energy that drives those interactions will find this book a very entertaining read as well. It’s one of those novels that deserves to be read and appreciated.

I give it a rating of 4 out of 5.