Ashes in the Wind by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

4 Stars

This was a reread after many, many years--and it held up to my memory.

I originally read this as a young teen and loved it. Rereading it as an adult I was wondering if it was going to be as good as I remembered, and while it wandered far afield, but at over 600 pages you have room for a story to stretch time and space, it was entertaining. I definitely understand why I liked it as a young woman. Alaina was so much of what I identified with at that age and aspired to from the metamorphosis from tomboy into beautiful young woman, the heroine--she's pulling the hero out of scrapes multiple times, not sitting back wilting and waiting, some fantastic friends, and some less than stellar family. I admired her fortitude and definitely had her smart mouth.

The Civil War is not a romantic period and this book spends more time dealing with the realities of shortages and renderings of medical care and issues (varnished), albeit far behind lines, but you get bone saw and various triage arguments. You get the wretched feelings of being torn apart by loyalties and ideas of decency and when they get sacrificed. You get the consequences of death and permanent injury and pain. All this in a bodice ripper? Yep.

"I have always been suspicious of this flaring thing that occurs on first glance," he muttered. He favored her with a quick glance and spoke with deliberate slowness. "How can I determine what love is? When a man and a woman begin to understand each other, love begins small and grows with the passage of time. It is that which a man holds within himself until it blooms to its fullest." 

Being a romance, you get to eat your cake and have it too. So while all these things are happening to the characters you don't leave them in a casket, which was nice. I read grim, we see grim every day on the news so having something that takes you through hell and back again with a happy ending is kinda nice, right now.

Two beings wrapped in the pure bliss of their union, proceeding in eager, uncaring haste, giving all to the other and in return finding everything and more.