"A fitting end to this mini-series"

The lawyer's letter announced that his odious father Thomas McBride was dying and demanded his family come home to the Circle M Ranch in nearby Sidewater. If Tom's oldest son Stone wants to inherit anything, he must return to this place he hates. Since he just lost his last coin in a poker game, Stone decides it is time to go home. Instead of staying at the family spread, Stone rents a room at Annabelle Chapin's boarding house even though she is the woman he once loved.

Stone constantly squabbles with his two brothers and sister, but also shares with them the distrust of Tom's second wife Clare. While struggling with his family and his stepmother, Stone skirmishes with his own treacherous heart that beats faster and louder every time he sees Annabelle. There is also his father to worry about him, a man who has hidden the truth about Circle M from his children.

The final novel to the Secret Fires miniseries ties up all the questions left from the three previous novels while telling a wonderful western romance. The story line is loaded with action and a twist or two. The lead couple is a cute duo making up for a decade of separation while the support cast includes family members and their spouses returning for the final engagement. Though THE LONER lives up to its name and can stand alone, new readers will find better appreciation of Evelyn Rogers' talent by reading the previous three stories first, written by other authors. By keeping the persona of previous lead couples consistent inside her plot, Ms. Rogers successfully closes with one of the year's best Texas romances.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted July 16, 2001

Summary

As first born, Stone had always tried to do the right thing, but that hadn't stopped his brother and sister from turning on him. And it hadn't kept the woman he loved from turning him down. In the years since, Stone had learned to go it alone; a gambler was better off that way. He'd returned to the Circle M for the money promised in his father's will, not for the family he'd once fought to protect, and certainly not for the vulnerable beauty his heart could never forget.