Blue Marble: Love Bears All Things

by Ray White

In Blue Marble you are a feisty and fetching woman in the richest decade of American history. Every man in Marble Colorado exhales vocally at your provocative 1910 fashions. And it doesn’t hurt that there are fifty strapping men for every female in this booming quarry camp in the rarified mountains of Colorado. Or perhaps, you’re the man who practically invented modern marble extraction. Every day you’re pulling out a hundred tons of the finest statuary marble the world has ever seen. The Lincoln Memorial and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are your finest achievements. Or maybe, you are just a broken widower looking for the most remote place on earth to hide. You could lose the next decade to misery and grinding depression without notice. It would be just fine if you never spoke to another human being, ever. Until your eyes landed on her. Blue Marble promises the most satisfying love story you’ve read in a while. When you’re finished, you’ll ask for the prequels, Swallow the Dog and If Only For a Season.

255 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 9, 2019

About the author

Darrell James is a California writer living in Pasadena. His short stories have appeared in numerous mystery magazines and in the book anthologies LAndmarked For Murder and Deadly Ink. He is the 2004 winner of Fire To Fly and winner of the 2007 Deadly Ink Competition. His solo anthology, Body Count: A Killer Collection, garnered a 2007 Reader Views-Reviewers Choice Award. Seductive schemes and dark ambitions dominate his story landscapes. "

Reviews

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so good. I didn’t know what to expect from the summary then when the book started I couldn’t stop reading it. It begins with Levi and his daddy going toMarble to look for work, but first little Levi wants to find something to send back to his girl Adelaide in Cripplecreek. They go into a store and Levi and Daddy are mesmerized. They run it to Lorraine with the pretty blue eyes and it seems everything in her store is created by her. The liniment she put on Levi’s for cracked hands, the marble statues she has for sale and every other RNN in the store. They also meet little Harriet who they believe to be Lorraine‘s daughter,but because of the effect The blue-eyed beauty has on Clark she doesn’t correct him.. He is mesmerized like a schoolboy in love for the first time. As weeks and months go by they always seem to run into each other even at his place of work where women are allowed. Now having said this short summary just know there is so much more to the story there is a tragedy, a redemption quail hunting with President Roosevelt and much much more. This book was so good I was shocked to see it was over nine hours long as it didn’t feel that long when I finished it. I highly recommend this book to those who like historical romance, great adventure stories and the underdog winning the day. There is so much the story has to offer to put it in one genre would be an insult. From the colorful characters to the different locations there are so many reasons to love this book and I love them all. The author narrated the audiobook and I thought he did a wonderful job as well as the woman narrator I thought it was a perfect Lorrain. As I said I can’t think of one thing wrong with this but it was so so good!

[Kathy Bryson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the biggest challenges in writing anything set in history is getting the feel of the times correct. Language, attitudes, social customs, so many little things change, that it's extremely challenging to write both accurately and sympathetically! How do you write a strong, independent woman when the only socially acceptable fate for any woman was marriage? How do you write about positive development of industry when accidents and fatalities were an accepted part of the workplace? How do you write about immigrant contributions when they were openly second-class and unwelcome?

Ray White manages this and more in Blue Marble, writing about the growth of the marble industry in America in the Gilded Age when robber barons ruled and men literally dug mines and roads by hand across the Rockies. Bluntly factual about the rigors and challenges of the times, he still creates sympathetic characters, showing the human needs that drive all people. From immigrants who brought old skills to the new world to former soldiers who never gave up the War of Rebellion, this book is peopled with characters who could have lived in the early years of the 19th century, but who would seem as familiar as your neighbors today.

The main characters pull you into the story and keep your attention throughout, curious to find out how and if they succeed. A well-written glimpse into the lives and events that helped make American industry at its beginning and that are still reflected today.