Cody Keaton lives in a dilapidated trailer up in the mountains
in Ramp, West Virginia. She lives from day to day and hand to mouth, barely
eking out a living and she’s usually stony broke. She’s basically happy and
doesn’t believe happiness can be bought. When Cody is given a lottery ticket
after returning a lost one dollar bill, the last thing she expects is to win big
time. When she does, she’s so shocked, she wonders if she should just throw the
ticket away rather than complicate her life with the millions she’s won. When
she calms down and has seriously thought it through, she collects her winnings
and decides to spend it sparingly. Just for essentials and the extra security
having money can bring.
Cody’s large extended family of aunts, uncles cousins and
various offspring, don’t agree with her and have other ideas. Soon the requests
and demands come piling in. Houses, cars, cash, clothing and all manners of
things the family feel they have to have. They all see it as their god given
right to share Cody’s winnings.
Bank manager, Maddie Osborne, can see that Cody is going to be
in deep trouble if she doesn’t sort out her finances quickly. Cody has never had
cause to be in a bank, let alone to know anything about handling vast sums of
money or investments. Maddie takes it upon herself to try to advise her newest,
richest, shy customer. She’s going to have her work cut out trying to protect
the vulnerable Cody from people who have designs on her money. Even Cody’s
family have to be stopped somehow.
Amidst all this, Maddie finds herself falling in love with
Cody. But Cody is a customer and it wouldn’t be ethical. Cody has feelings for
Maddie too. But she can’t allow herself to fall in love with a woman who’s
ambition is to move to a bigger city and to climb the career ladder. Anyway,
Cody asks herself what Maddie would see in a hillbilly like herself. Even if
they did decide to take a chance on love, Maddie wouldn’t be happy in Ramp and
Cody couldn’t possibly be happy in a big city. Will there be a chance one or the
other of them can change or will they have to go their own separate
ways?
Quite simply put, I love this book. It’s one of the best Susan
Meagher has written. I’ve loved some of Susan’s other books, among them Arbor
Vitae and All That Matters, this is up there on a par with these two favorites
of mine.
The story is well written, tender, passionate, humorous and
the book had me riveted from the first page right through to the last page. Even
though this book is fairly long, I still didn’t have enough.
I love both main characters. Cody is so vulnerable and
lovable, she’s had everything so hard throughout her life, it was great to see
her blossoming with her good fortune. Maddie is a high flyer, managing a small
bank in a small town. She wants more. But when she starts helping out Cody, she
discovers a love for the great outdoors. Together Cody and Maddie begin to learn
more about how each other lives.
When Cody decides to come out to her family, she isn’t really
telling them anything they didn’t already know. Although they are not too happy,
they don’t get on her back too much either. Eventually they come to accept that
Cody has her own life to lead and if she happens to want a woman, that’s fine
with them.
The scenic descriptions were vivid and colorful. I could
easily visualize myself being there up in the mountains, hunting, or fishing or
in the bank with Maddie. The whole book was a delight to immerse myself in.
I like the way the story left nothing and no stone unturned.
Everything was explained and shown in a descriptive way rather than being told
with cold hard facts.
It’s nice to see the way Cody gradually comes out of her
shell, how she becomes more confident and begins to learn to trust people. I
liked seeing how Maddie slowly changed too and how she began to realize that
material things really didn’t matter when she had nature all around
her.
I’m not sure if there is a moral to this story, but I’ve
personally taken a lot from this book. The main thing being, that money is nice
to have, but it really can’t buy everything, love and happiness
included.
I’m putting this in my re-read pile. I will definitely be
reading it again very soon.
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