Texas Sunrise

January 4, 1993
The final installment (after Texas Fury ) in Michaels's series about the Coleman clan and its aeronautics and fashion empires opens with family matriarch Billie Coleman Kingsley receiving bad medical news. Meanwhile, Billie's daughter Maggie is ruining her marriage with her total devotion to her husband; another daughter, embittered and weak Susan, searches desperately for love; Maggie's son, Cole, questions his ability to lead his father-in-law's business, while his sister Sawyer forces him to confront the ghosts that haunt him. Through such family crises as death, divorce, birth and tragic accidents, staged in locales ranging from Texas to Japan to Hawaii, the family members struggle to cope with Billie's impending death and to understand her lessons about family, power and love. Readers who are new to the series may have trouble understanding how the characters are linked and why they act as they do, but already indoctrinated fans will find that Michaels provides a satisfying, though somewhat perfunctory, sense of closure.

Billie Ames Coleman Kingsley, grande dame of the Coleman Empire, is dying, and her family must learn to live without her guiding hand. In the finale to TEXAS RICH, the Coleman children and grandchildren are at odds until they learn to pull together to keep the Coleman fortune intact and their traditions alive. Laural Merlington's familiarity with Michaels's characters adds continuity to this saga. Her accents are subtle as the dialogue switches from the New England nasal of Thad to the Texas twang of the Colemans to the stiffer Japanese phrasing of the Eastern half of the family. Author Michaels forces the Colemans to learn the value of family while coping with Billie's imminent death. M.B.K. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine