bn.com
Since Debbie Macomber introduced readers to the town of Buffalo Valley in her New York Times bestselling Dakota trilogy, readers have watched the town revitalize, as long-term residents and newcomers fought to preserve it -- and often found love along the way. In this charming volume, Buffalo Valley faces a new challenge. Everyone thinks Vaughn Kyle has come to town to meet Hassie Knight. After all, Vaughn was named after Hassie's dead son, and this is the first time he's come to town. What the folks in town don't know is that Vaughn's fiancée, Natalie Nichols, works for the Value-X conglomerate, and that Natalie has asked Vaughn to use this visit as a scouting trip to evaluate Buffalo Valley as a location for one of their superstores. If that store gets built, it will be goodbye Main Street, including Hassie Knight's drugstore. Once Vaughn meets Hassie's assistant, Carrie Hendrickson, it doesn't take long for him to realize that he's facing one of the most important choices of his life. He's caught between Value-X and Buffalo Valley, between Natalie's corporate savvy and Carrie's country-girl smarts, and between the future he always envisioned
for himself and the appealing way of life that he glimpsed
in the unique little town.
Publishers Weekly
The fictional town of Buffalo Valley, which was the setting for Macomber's Dakota trilogy (Always Dakota, etc.), faces a new hurdle at Christmastime in this fourth volume. Recently discharged after seven years in the army, Vaughn Kyle arrives in the North Dakota community with a double motive. The first is to meet Hassie Knight, the aging town pharmacist whose deceased son was Kyle's namesake. The second is to secretly scope out the town for Value-X, a Wal-Mart-like chain for whom Vaughn is about to start work and for which his hard-driving girlfriend, Natalie Nichols, works as a vice-president. The meeting with Hassie affects Vaughn more than he expected, and so, in a different way, does an encounter with her assistant, Carrie Hendrickson. Wary after a painful divorce, Carrie is drawn to Kyle and offers to show him the town. Rationalizing that he's supposed to find out as much about Buffalo Valley as possible, he agrees. Soon Kyle meets a raft of townspeople and learns about the close relationships that make the community special. He also finds himself falling for Carrie. When the news breaks that Value-X plans to build a store in town, people are outraged at the threat to their small businesses and organize to fight it. Caught in the middle, Vaughn must choose between the brittle Natalie, with whom he had discussed marriage, and the compassionate Carrie. Although there's never any doubt that both the town and true love will triumph, Vaughn's dilemma generates genuine tension. Macomber keeps her characters straight enough to avoid confusion and displays her usual gift for tugging on the heartstrings. Although there isn't enough depth or suspense here to generate runaway sales, thissentimental stocking-stuffer should please fans of the series as well as new readers. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
