Nothing Sacred

Rating:
Summary: exciting character study
Review: Divorced mother of four Martha Moore loves raising her children in Shelter Valley, Arizona where she was born and has lived her entire life though the teen years have become tiring as the older ones have begun to challenge her authority. She also enjoys her work as a production assistant at Montford University's TV station. Perhaps the only blemish on her life is the betrayal by her former husband Todd.

However, a worse tragedy occurs when a so called Good Samaritan picks up Martha's daughter Ellen, who ran out of gas, and rapes her. The town's new minister David Cole Marks of the Shelter Valley Community Church tries to help the family especially Martha and Ellen cope and understand how this could happen to a good person, but even he doubts the angel inside his head. However though he and Martha are attracted to one another, she rejects his overtures as a man and as a minister as she lost faith in everyone but herself long before Ellen's rape.

This exciting character study focuses on the relationships between Martha and her four teenage children and with David as well his weird one with the voice inside his head. The story line is cleverly designed so that the audience can taste teen angst made geometrically worse by the rape. Fans will appreciate this fine tale as they wonder whether a permanent relationship between the adults can go the distance with so much to tear it asunder.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Winner of the WordWeaving Award for Excellence
Review: Martha Moore's forty-something year old professor husband left her for a twenty-something old student. Consequently, she cannot help treating the new minister's sermon on love with cynicism. But David Cole Marks is the first minister in Shelter Valley not to hide behind his robe and his pulpit. He is determined to earn Martha's trust and confidence, patient with her even if he must pay for the transgressions of another man. Who better, he believes, given that he ministers because he carefully protects a secret that keeps him from marrying and having his own family.

Martha's twenty-year old daughter Ellen hitchhikes when she runs out of gas. Unthinkably for Shelter Valley, a stranger picks her up and rapes her. The shock ripples through the small town that once considered itself totally safe. Suddenly people find themselves locking doors and looking over their shoulders. Indeed, no one is left untouched, especially David, who suspects that the rape is tied to a much bigger crime wave that threatens to overwhelm the peace and serenity of Shelter Valley. Now he and Martha must combine their efforts to make a difference for the town they both love.

Author Tara Taylor Quinn captures the horrors of life as well as the power of faith and love to transcend all in NOTHING SACRED. Quinn deftly creates the painful nuances of a family devastated by infidelity and the loss of a father. The impact on the four children is profound from the eldest daughter whose determinate to not be a burden leads her to the wrong place at the wrong time to the teen daughter who seems bent on a path of self-destruction. Consequently, trust issues dominate this family and the minister determined to reach them. But his own painful past threatens to overwhelm the beauty of the place where he comes to find love and acceptance. Quinn does not shy away from the darker side of life, but she does balance with a promise of happiness. Both Martha and David are the kind of people we would all like to know and would feel compassion for as they fight their individual demons. As they confront the disillusionment that nothing may be sacred, their transformation will touch readers deeply. One of the most powerful Superromances I have had the privilege to review, NOTHING SACRED earns the WordWeaving Award for Excellence.