BOOKS
Kauai is the backdrop for new mystery novel
Review by Michael Egan
Special to the Star-Bulletin
IF you like romance with an edge, you'll love "Freefall." With beautiful Kauai as its backdrop and beautiful Gentry Fox as its star -- almost literally, as she's a rising movie star -- the action involves love, betrayal, attempted murder, a child-molestation scandal, at least two kidnappings, ransom demands, a handsome hero and, of course, dramatic final revelations. One need hardly add that in the end, girl gets boy.
"Freefall"
Author: Kristen Heitzmann
Publisher: Bethany House
464 pages
$13.99
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Formulaic? Certainly, though there is more here than at first meets the eye. Gentry tumbles into the story like Alice down her rabbit hole, crashing out of a Hanalei waterfall to find herself without memory, identity or friends.
She is immediately surrounded by a host of intriguing characters, including Monica and Cameron Pierce, who take her in, and a range of lovable and unlovable Kauai locals -- a cop called T.J. Kanakanui, a menacing bruddah with a red dragon tattooed on his arm, and blind Auntie Okelani, who give her situation moral depth and spiritual resonance. It is Okelani who recognizes the "malice" gathering around Gentry -- she uses the word often, though it is offset by what Monica calls Shekina glory, "the touch of God visible in you."
"Freefall" could be fairly described as Malice in Wonderland.
In her search for the identity and motive of the would-be killer who pushed her off the ledge above the waterfall, Gentry discovers herself, true love and the real meaning of stardom. It's a cruel and vicious world in which people are driven by greed, ambition, selfishness -- and love, the shining hope at the bottom of this Pandora's box of troubles.
Author Kristen Heitzmann, a Colorado-based writer of Christian fiction, packs "Freefall" with action, but it is a novel of feelings rather than movement, a sufficiently fresh adaptation of the Harlequin Romance formula that will touch both your heart and your mind. It's a little long, and some of the pidgin by the locals is patronizing, but overall it is well worth a read.
"Freefall" may be ordered through bookstores, or visit www.bethanyhouse.com. Michael Egan is a published author, scholar in residence at Brigham Young University-Hawaii and adjunct professor of English at TransPacific Hawaii College. E-mail him at
drmichaelegan@hawaii.rr.com