Book Review of
The Road To Paradise
An ideal sanctuary and a dream come true–that’s what Margaret Lane feels as she takes in God’s gorgeous handiwork in Mount Rainier National Park. It’s 1927 and the National Park Service is in its youth when Margie, an avid naturalist, lands a coveted position alongside the park rangers living and working in the unrivaled splendor of Mount Rainier’s long shadow.
But Chief Ranger Ford Brayden is still haunted by his father’s death on the mountain, and the ranger takes his work managing the park and its crowd of visitors seriously. The job of watching over an idealistic senator’s daughter with few practical survival skills seems a waste of resources.
When Margie’s former fiancé sets his mind on developing the Paradise Inn and its surroundings into a tourist playground, the plans might put more than the park’s pristine beauty in danger. What will Margie and Ford sacrifice to preserve the splendor and simplicity of the wilderness they both love?
Karen Barnett’s vintage national parks novels bring to vivid life President Theodore Roosevelt’s vision for protected lands, when he wrote in Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter: “There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.”
Lynn's Review
I really enjoyed this book. It was a fun easy read that I finished in two days. After abandoning two modern fiction books because they contained way too many descriptive love scenes, it was nice to read a clean Christian romance type of book. In my opinion a good story line does not need descriptive loves scenes to sell it. All too often modern day fiction has at least a few pages that I feel could have totally been left out of the book.
The problem with most Christian or clean romance is that it is cheesy, over the top sappy, and very predictable. This book is a bit cheesy and predictable, but it was also fun to read.
It is set in a National Park which makes it in unusual setting for a book like this. I enjoyed the descriptions of the mountains and scenery. The book in a way helps promote National Parks. I grew up in the Pacific NW, and the author does a great job of describing that part of the country. I think this is due to the fact that the author was a Park Ranger at one time, so she knows what it is like.
I thought most of the challenges they face in the book are real challenges that could have been faced at the time the book is set, which is in the 1920’s. Many books like this are unrealistic, but this one had a pretty realistic story line.