"Can a coerced return guarantee happiness?"

Winsome Grainer nervously stands with her four-year-old daughter, Lacey, at her father-in-law's graveside. Not wanting to be there, she has been compelled to return to the Grainger family estate, known as Totara Park, for the reading of his will. With her estranged husband Jared, she learns that both of them inherit half of this estate. But the terms of the will call for her and her daughter to come back to Totara Park and live with Jared.

At one time, Winsome was madly in love with this handsome heir but some of her deep dark secrets were used by Ruth, Jared's mother, to make her flee the homestead over five years ago. Still very much afraid of Ruth, Winsome is hesitant to share with Jared her frightening concerns and her haunting past. Can she learn to trust Jared again and become his loving wife in every sense?

Will the two lovers ever get their issues resolved and raise their beautiful daughter together on the family holdings? Will Ruth ever leave her son to live his own life? Read this story and enjoy the journey through many trials to find the answers to these questions.

RETURN TO TOTARA PARK is a fast-paced story of intrigue with a touching romance that tugs at your heartstrings. I look forward to the next adventure in writing from Shirley Wine.

Rated R.

Reviewed by Sharon M. Bressen
Courtesy Sensual Romance
Posted January 28, 2003

Also available in e-book format.

Summary

Winsome Grainger left Totara Park with a dark secret in her heart and a darker secret in her past vowing never to return, a vow shattered when she and her estranged husband, Jared each inherit a half share in Totara Park, the Grainger Dynasty's Estate.

Under the terms of Jared's father's Will, he and Winsome must live on Totara Park together for two years or the Estate will be sold. Unable to live with the knowledge that, through her, Jared stands to lose his heritage, Winsome reluctantly returns to Totara Park with their four year old daughter Lacey.

But she soon discovers that Jared is not the man she had loved so desperately and married with such haste, a man she realises she will love until her dying day. The dark secrets of the past rise up and threaten Winsome's happiness when she discovers her old enemy lying in wait as ready now as in the past, to pounce and destroy.

Unsure of her husband's support, she suffers the guilt of the damned. Never possessing the courage to confide these dark secrets in Jared, Winsome has time to regret never telling him why she walked out on their marriage, why she left him, or why she left Totara Park. Now these secrets threaten not only her shaky marriage and her love for the Jared, they threaten her precious child's life, her own life... Filled with foreboding, she discovers she's a mere pawn in a dark and deadly game. A game whose rules she doesn't know....