Castles in the Snow

Alladale

Fiction - Mystery - Historical
258 Pages
Reviewed on 12/05/2020
Buy on Amazon

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Author Biography

Linda Heavner Gerald has received much acclaim for her books. She has been writing for over seven years and published eighteen novels. Her work includes all genres. Linda writes each day with the goal of publishing books of substance. She draws from her medical background to alert her readers of current medical problems as well as providing inspiration through her many travels. Linda hopes to transport her readers from the safety of their home to places they may never discover. Her most important goal is to demonstrate that God loves all of us. Even though her characters create problems for themselves, she wittingly shows how God can extract us from the mess we make. The President's Book Award has been awarded several of her books for the past three years. This author has also obtained international acclaim. Linda's books are all over the world. Reader's Favorite bestowed the silver medal for her YA book, AnnaPolis Summers, in 2018. In 2019, Linda won the Reader's Favorite Gold medal in Urban Fiction for the book: Cycles Of Hatred.
The Gulf of Mexico delights her as she shares her world with her husband, Buddy, of twenty-six years and their yellow cat, Jackson Brownie Gerald. Her son recently joined them in Florida, where the most beautiful beaches in the world welcome them.



    Book Review

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Castles in the Snow: Alladale is a historical mystery written by Linda Heavner Gerald. Caroline struggled to clear her mind of the fog still holding it captive. She knew it was Alladale, her lovely home, but why was the window near her bed wide open, making it feel as though a thousand tiny shards of ice were assaulting her eyes, her lips, her face. And there in the hearth was a roaring fire, its warmth overbearing despite the chill of the open windows. Her hands and feet were manacled; she was restrained but what had happened, how had she been made a prisoner in her own home -- and why.

Where was Thomas? While she lay there, her body buffeted by the heat of the fire and the chill blasting through the open window, she began to remember her earliest days in the wedding-cake home she shared with her parents in Charleston, South Carolina. Thomas and his brother Max were a part of that early life as well, their home painted a blazing gold by their father, a gold which, captured in the late afternoon sun, seemed to be metallic rather than being merely bricks painted gold. Thomas and Max each sought Caroline for their own as the three grew up together, but Thomas had won her hand, and together they went in search of their ancestral roots, back across the Atlantic to Scotland.

Linda Heavner Gerald’s Castles in the Snow: Alladale has the reader wondering who has taken Caroline captive and why as they follow the details of her life in Charleston and later in Scotland, and learn about Scottish history through her and Thomas’s research. There’s also the tantalizing aspect of the 23,000-acre nature preserve they were intent on creating when they purchased Alladale. Gerald’s story is well-written and will make the more imaginative and impressionable reader begin to notice the scent of heather as they read this marvelous tale. Her characters are credible, and her mystery bristles with red herrings and clues for the armchair sleuth to puzzle over. Castles in the Snow: Alladale is highly recommended.