Citizen Grouch recommends: Thunder and Rain

The best book is the one you didn't go looking for but instead just happen to find it on the shelf at the library and take it home thinking that you'll give it a couple pages to prove itself worthy of reading.  I found Thunder and Rain by Charles Martin this way recently.  It's a story about a third generation Texas Ranger now retired due to injuries received in a gun battle living in west Texas on this ranch with his son and an ex-con helper.  His wife?  she couldn't cope with the stress of being a Ranger's wife and isn't around.  'Cowboy' as he is known literally bumps into a woman and her young daughter when he is on his way to visit his wife in a detox sanitarium.  The woman is fleeing from a child molester who happens to be a policeman too.  The action starts from there but also the story between Cowboy, his son, his wife, and the woman Samantha and her daughter Hope. 

The story has John Wayne movies, a Les Baer 1911 .45 worn on the hip, horses and diesel pickups, target shooting and  a real shootout....men can feel safe reading this.  It also has the pain of relationships and growing love and love lost, so women can read it too.

I found it to be a book that I just couldn't put down and if you read it I hope you feel the same way too.

I'll be looking for other books by this author.  Highly recommended, I give this five stars out of five!