The Author That Started It All

I was twelve I think, and I had read most of the young adult books. I was looking for something new to read. I remember being horrified by some of the covers of scantily clad women, clasped in the arms of brawny men. I was looking for something not too obvious. Something that wouldn't tip my mother off that it was a ROMANCE NOVEL.

And there it was. A shiny red paperback book. The cover didn't have any naked ladies on it. Mackenzie's Mountain by Linda Howard. I picked that book up, and I have literally never looked back. That was my first foray into romance.

It was like I was Lucy discovering Narnia.

I have lost count how many times I have borrowed that book from the library, and read and re-read it. I, later on, read all of (yes, all of) Linda Howard's books because her writing is addicting, but Mackenzie's Mountain holds a special place in my heart. It's up there in my head in the Romance Hall of Fame.

I remember falling in love with the setting of the story, the characters (delicious Wolf Mackenzie), the plot, and basically everything in the story, really.

Set in Wyoming, the story is about a small-town teacher named Mary, who is a self-proclaimed spinster. She is a quiet woman, with an iron-clad will, and is basically a do-gooder. When one of her students (Joe Mackenzie) stops attending her classes she goes to visit his house, in order to persuade him to come back. On her journey up the mountain, her car breaks down and she is rescued by a tall, commanding looking man. He takes her out of her car, and Mary's simple world implodes.

Wolf Mackenzie is a hard man (which is a characteristic of Linda's heroes) and he has experienced the harshness that life has to offer. He's established a life in the small town, by the skin of his teeth, but the townspeople ar

e wary of him, on the account of some events of his past. Wolf is also half-Indian. At that time I didn't know of the prejudice some people had had against Native Americans, but I would learn that after reading that book.

While Wolf does not want to embroil Mary into his complicated life, he is drawn to the Anglo woman. I could feel myself falling in love with the man along with Mary. I remember finishing that book with a happy but melancholy feeling. I immediately set about trying to replicate that feeling as often as I possibly could, and the never-ending TBR list was born.

I thank Linda Howard for writing that book. I thank her for putting those characters to paper, and for making me fall in love with the genre of romance. For me, it was really the book that started it all.

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