This Time for Keeps by Kathleen Kane Review
St. Martin's Press, April, 1998.Paperback, 313 pages.
ISBN: 0312965095.
Ordering information: Amazon.com
Tracy Hill just died -- again. Each one of her eight lives has ended disastrously. As soon as it looks like she might find true love, a ridiculous accident takes her off and the reincarnation process must start all over again. So Tracy makes a deal with the Resettlement Committee -- she'll only agree to go back if she can have health, wealth, no love and she gets to remember all her past lives. Unfortunately Tracy, an advertising executive in 1998, forgets to specify a date and is horrified upon awakening to find herself on a ranch in Montana in 1875. Luckily though it looks as if love is far away -- her handsome blue-eyed ranch foreman is not her type at all. At least not at first. As Tracy and her foreman Seth Murdoch get to know each other sparks flare. Then the dreams from her past lives begin and the lover that gets her killed in every lifetime looks suspiciously like her new foreman. As Tracy and Seth fall for each other they have to decide what to do. Will falling in love just get Tracy killed again or could this be the time they get to live happily ever after?
Kathleen Kane has outdone herself with This Time for Keeps. Tracy is a delight and her struggles as a woman of the 1990s trying to adapt to the mores of the 1870s is hilarious to watch, as are her spirited exchanges with the mystified Seth Murdoch who is attracted to this woman despite her strange ways such as demanding to wear blue jeans -- to the absolute scandal of the entire community. With a zippy pace and lots of interesting tension between Seth and Tracy This Time For Keeps is a winner.
Return to the April 1998 issue of The IWJ.
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