"Exciting character study"

Divorced mother of four Martha Moore loves raising her children in Shelter Valley, Arizona where she was born and has lived her entire life though the teen years have become tiring as the older ones have begun to challenge her authority. She also enjoys her work as a production assistant at Montford University's TV station. Perhaps the only blemish on her life is the betrayal by her former husband Todd.

However, a worse tragedy occurs when a so called Good Samaritan picks up Martha's daughter Ellen, who ran out of gas, and rapes her. The town's new minister David Cole Marks of the Shelter Valley Community Church tries to help the family especially Martha and Ellen cope and understand how this could happen to a good person, but even he doubts the angel inside his head. However though he and Martha are attracted to one another, she rejects his overtures as a man and as a minister as she lost faith in everyone but herself long before Ellen's rape.

This exciting character study focuses on the relationships between Martha and her four teenage children and with David as well his weird one with the voice inside his head. The story line is cleverly designed so that the audience can taste teen angst made geometrically worse by the rape. Fans will appreciate this fine tale as they wonder whether a permanent relationship between the adults can go the distance with so much to tear it asunder.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted February 27, 2004

Summary

There's something happening in Shelter Valley...

Shelter Valley, Arizona, is the kind of place where everyone wants to live. Martha Moore, divorced mother of four, has spent her whole life here and can't imagine being anywhere else. But something frightening has happened, and it affects Martha and her children. It also touches David Cole Marks, the new minister in town.

Martha's a woman without faith, still bitter about a husband's betrayal. And David's a minister with secrets, a past that haunts him. But they have to put these burdens aside to work together, to make a difference to Shelter Valley. And each other?