Call Of The Mountain

About the Book

Fire Mountain is a romance-mystique with a developing love relationship.

Angelique Marney is a young woman writer who marries a Jekyl/Hyde personality( Philip Manning) when she is twenty one. She lives in St. Louis Missouri where she works as a hostess in her mother’s restaurant-bar, the LaFrance, in the tourist district. The three year traumatic marriage ending with her husband’s death in a car accident, served to make her completely distrustful of another close relationship.

There is an inheritance of a property on the Pacific coast rim in Oregon from a long lost ancestor, Veronica. Angel determines to go to the Oregon coast and start her life anew, heal from her traumatic marriage and pursue her writing career. She has always had a strange longing to live in Oregon on the coast. The old house on Fire Mountain has a hundred and fifty year old history.  As her love for the mountain and natural environment grows, she is drawn into an effort to help save the Pacific rim environment. She finds Veronica’s memoirs in a loosened stone of the fireplace after an Oregon earthquake and is drawn ever deeper into the charisma and mystique of the old house.

Navarone, the mountain’s guardian and self proclaimed female Shaman plays an important part in the story as a mystic who helps Angel both in her understanding of the importance of the fight to help save the environment on the Pacific rim, but also in  helping her deal with the wicked Cary Nichols, Angel’s enemy and rival.

Cary Nichols, a young woman devoid of morals, is determined to trap Tyler Casini into marriage, and gain control of the Casini winery wealth and the vast forested area belonging to the Casini family on Fire Mountain. Angel is torn between her growing attraction to Tyler Casini, the immediate mystery she encounters in the mountain home, and being drawn into the love of the pristine mountain atmosphere, and into what Navarone claims is “Angel´s destiny.”

The mystique revolves around the lingering spirit of Veronica, Angel´s long lost ancestor who makes her presence felt. Startling mystical help come by way of Navarone, and Wolf Spirit, a  hybrid wolf who befriends Angel.   Will Angel be able to overcome two attempts on her life from the evil manipulative Cary Nichols? Will she be able to conquer her fear of another relationship, and be able to trust again? Will she be able to follow Navarone’s instructions through her writing and research of the endangered forests and Pacific rim? Is it possible that Navarone’s prophecy could come true? That Angel’s own future daughter Alexandre will rise high in government, whose aim it will be to prevent the destruction of our environment, that is, if the evil powers that be do not destroy her?

Fire Mountain is for all us romantics who crave thrills & chills. Ms. Harmon´s interplay of genre is nothing short of masterful. Harmon has turned that trying time between a change of scenery and finally arriving at the mountaintop into magic--a "can´t put down tale" of found love and avarice, and all among the tall trees and vineyards of Oregon´s west slope.

About the Author

Although I was published at twenty six years old when I already had two children, I was too busy for many years to get down to the nitty gritty of any heavy writing except for short stories and poetry until a third daughter was about twelve years old. I have a simple style that anyone can read. My sister, also a writer had a much more complex style and use of words. I always admired her, but I am me and I can’t duplicate any other writer although I wish I could. I am never quite satisfied with my writing, although if a reader enjoys my novel, that is all I can expect. I will be ever trying to aim for perfection. My writing involvement took on a more stringent involvement when in 1992 I actually setup a local electronical bulletin board for writers from my home computer. When I think back at all the work involved, I would have done well to tend to my own writing. However, my aim was to stay in contact with writers and help in anyway I could. How I wish I had an instructor at an early age in the rudiments of grammar and style. Instead, I had piano lessons at age eleven. If I had writing instructions then and practiced as hard as I did at piano, I would be a great writer by now. Practice makes perfect. How true. The teacher is all important, and I had a good music teacher. In music, you develop your own style. In writing, it takes a while to discover that unique style. A lot of research went into my novel, and a lot of re-writing. Much of the historical parts of my novel are taken from my own family tree. That was fun to be able to use it. I have a weakness in writing of “telling” a story more than letting the story unfold with “showing” using the five senses and more dialogue. I do however think the novel caries a message that you can relate to and that the novel is readable to the unpracticed eye. It is quite frightening to put a novel out to the public and wish it were a masterpiece knowing that I strive for perfection just as I did in my music. If you enjoy Call Of the Mountain as much as I loved writing it, despite hundreds of hours of work, I will be happy indeed.