Homeplace

March 1, 1999
While Ross's newest modern love story is nicely put together, it's very similar to a cluster of recent romances that have just hit the market. The novel stars a high-powered corporate lawyer, Ms. Raine Cantrell, who's making a splash in New York City but has no lover, no friends and no home-cooked meals. She's called back to her grandmother's home on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, where three delinquent teenage girls have barricaded themselves and are holding off Sheriff Jack O'Halloran and a squad of law-enforcement officers. It seems that Raine's grandmother Ida has been hospitalized for a day, and no one is around to take care of her foster girls. As Raine neglects her New York practice to make sure the trio is not returned to the system, she falls in love with Jack, a gentle though macho widower whose wife has died of cancer. Beyond the entertaining quirky Pacific Northwest types (similar to those invented by Jayne Ann Krentz), there are few surprises here.