Stone Field

Stone Field is by debut author Christy Lenzi.

In a small town on the brink of Civil War, Catrina finds a man making strange patterns in her family's sorghum crop.  He's mad with fever, naked, and strikingly beautiful.  He has no memory of who he is or what he's done before Catrina found him in Stone Field.  But that doesn't bother Catrina because she doesn't like thinking about the things she's done before either.

Catrina and Stonefield fall passionately, dangerously, in love.  All they want is to live with each other, in harmony with the land and away from Cat's protective brother, the new fanatical preacher, and the neighbors who are scandalized by their relationship.  But Stonefield can't escape the truth about who he is, and the conflict tearing apart the country demands that demands that everyone take a side before the bloodbath reaches their doorstep.

The Breakdown:
1. I was a little weary of this book because Lenzi was heavily inspired by Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, which is one of my least favorite books. I will admit I did like the characters of Catrina and Stonefield a little more than Cathy and Heathcliff, but I did not feel really connected to them.  For a couple that has this strong connection, at first, they sure had a lot of trouble communicating with each other when things got tough.

2. Cat is very free-spirited, and definitely has a soul of an artist, but she is willfully naive about the world around her.  She is almost to the point of selfish in how see does not she what is going on the world or her loved ones lives.

3. What I did really like about this book was the depiction of a Missouri, a border state, on the brink of the Civil War. It was interesting to see how the war affected communities, and how easily families and friends are torn apart by this war. I almost wish the story had focused more on that than the angst of Catrina and Stonefield's relationship.

To Read or Not to Read:
Skip, unless you are into angsty, tragic love stories.