An Uncertain Refuge [Kindle Edition]

Carolyn J. Rose (Author)

Book Description

(If you enjoy this book, please check out the sequel, Sea of Regret)

A child orphaned by violence. A woman sworn to protect and raise him. A killer come to claim him. A few deadly minutes in An Uncertain Refuge.

Kate Dalton lives by the rules of honesty and fair play until she steps between a battered woman and the man intent on killing her. Amanda Blake barely survives; her ex-husband dies by Kate’s hand. The repercussions force Kate from her job at a domestic violence shelter. Fleeing unwanted publicity and yearning to break with her past, she heads to the Oregon coast, burdened by a coerced promise to Amanda—to care for the nine-year-old son of the man she killed and shield him from the truth.

For several weeks Kate holds a tattered web of lies together. Then Way-Ray’s vengeful uncle murders Amanda, an ambush journalist tells the story, and the boy bolts in horror. Aided by a dangerous man she only half-trusts, Kate searches for the boy she’s come to love. But a sadistic killer intent on claiming his kin is watching every move.

Watch for the sequel, By the Sea of Regret, in the fall of 2012.

A portion of the profit from this book helps support the work of the Wildlife Center of the North Coast in Astoria, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carolyn J. Rose is the author of several novels, including Hemlock Lake, Through a Yellow Wood, An Uncertain Refuge, Sea of Regret, A Place of Forgetting, and No Substitute for Murder. The sequel to that, No Substitute for Money, will be out in the late spring of 2013. She also penned a young adult fantasy, Drum Warrior, with her husband, Mike Nettleton.

She grew up in New York's Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, logged two years in Arkansas with Volunteers in Service to America, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She founded the Vancouver Writers' Mixers and is an active supporter of her local bookstore, Cover to Cover. Her interests are reading, gardening, and not cooking.

Product Details

• File Size: 531 KB
• Print Length: 359 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0983735905
• Publisher: Carolyn J. Rose, Author (May 12, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0050KKBT0
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,802 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An incredible read at any price! June 1, 2011

By RP Dahlke

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I downloaded An Uncertain Refuge, by Carolyn J. Rose for an afternoon read on the couch, chips and ice-tea at hand. I managed to move from couch to dinner table, then back to couch, then to bed and by 11:30pm I finished this very satisfying Indy author's book in record time because I simply had to read it all without stopping.
This is suspense at its finest. Kate Dalton runs a women's shelter in Arkansas, but when an abusive ex-con husband takes a knife to his wife, Kate steps out of her comfort zone and in the altercation, he dies. Pushed by her superiors to capitalize on the incident with a sleazy movie company, Kate, without anything to keep her in this town, leaves her job for the open road, intent on starting over. Then she gets a request from the victim: Take my son with you. Kate has no husband, no children and she intends to keep it that way. But, the woman is adamant, take him, or she'll put him in foster care. In spite of her better judgment, Kate's heart softens and she agrees to take the shattered woman's nine-year old son for two weeks while the woman recuperates--at least that's her take on it, until the road trip gets to Oregon and the boy has a medical emergency and Kate must get the mother's permission for an apendectemy. The mother's phone message says to refer all questions to her lawyer. She's gone, leaving behind a sick and agitated child, and Kate, who is trying not to panic. The lawyer fixes the problem with the hospital about Kate's guardianship, but not the final question of where Way-Ray's mom has gone or why she ran.
Seeing an opportunity to get a cheap place for the boy to recover and some additional money, Kate takes a temporary job in a local motel as manager, and in doing so, acquires a ready-made circle of friends in Rhea, the wise cracking, chain smoking and big hearted motel manager and Evie who runs a wildlife refuge on the coast, and eventually, a man of steadfast character who loves her and in whom she learns to return that love.
The question of why the boy's mother is soon resolved when Kate hires a PI to look for her. The dead ex-con husband has a half-brother and he's hell-bound to finish the job on the mother and take the boy back to the father's drunken, abusive family.
This book reads like women's fiction, thick with beautifully written atmosphere, a deeply introspective protagonist with incredibly well developed secondary characters. The ending is perfect, and remarkable in that there was not the over-the-top violence. I'm going back for more Carolyn J Rose books, they're terrific at any price.

RP Dahlke,
A DEAD RED HEART
A DEAD RED CADILLAC
Kindle @$2.99

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A suspenseful thriller that deals with inconvenient social ills... August 3, 2011

By Steve Moore

Format:Paperback

Don't miss this book! It's a thriller, full of action and suspense. Moreover, the underlying theme, spouse abuse and exploitation of women, points out inconvenient social ills in our society--indeed, in the world. Ms. Rose's prose is riveting and her characters sparkle with authenticity. None of the story seems contrived. I couldn't put it down.

First, the story: Kate Dalton manages an Arkansan domestic violence shelter, a place where abused women go as a last recourse when the prehistoric system of restraining orders fails, as it usually does. Amanda Blake's double ex--one ex for angry ex-husband and the other for violent ex-con--shows up at the shelter and tries to kill her. Kate steps in with a few martial arts skills and ex-hubby dies by his own knife. The governing board of the shelter, led by a sleazy misogynist lawyer, wants to take advantage of the publicity, but Kate, her priority on protecting the women, doesn't, so the board fires her. She heads out of town but is detoured by the recovering Amanda who cons Kate into being her son's guardian while, like a mother bird leading the cat away from the nestlings, takes the ex-husband's equally violent brother on a wild goose chase.

Kate seeks and finds comfort in menial labor while running a motel located on the Oregon shore. She and Amanda's son (the kid is a hoot) are befriended by two of the motel workers, the chamber maid and the handyman; an older woman running an animal shelter; and a sheriff who prefers fishing in solitude but is ready to help. She begins a process of bonding with Amanda's son. But all along the brother is hot on Kate's trail. After killing Amanda in Ohio, he makes it to Oregon. The confrontation with Kate turns into a confrontation with the handyman, but I won't spoil the ending for you.

Historically spouse abuse and exploitation of women have been associated with ignorance and the lower classes. Now we know (or should know) better. It permeates all social classes and educational levels of male homo sapiens (the sapiens part is debatable, of course). In fact, some of the most egregious cases correspond to well educated and well-off men who still believe that their wives and girl friends are private property to use and abuse as they please. Some societies, of course, even institutionalize this. Is there any difference between the fundamentalist Mormon Jeffers and an Arab emir with his multiple wives? Is there any difference between a Hindu who lights fire to his wife so that he can get a bigger dowry or fundamentalist Muslims strictly interpreting Sharia law by stoning an unfaithful wife to death?

When I was in South America, I was saddened by obvious cases of abuse where the woman would say something like "Oh, I think he doesn't really love me unless he slaps me around a little." This is victim mentality. The other excuse often heard: "Oh, he's just gets nasty when he drinks--otherwise, he's fine." The latter often corresponded to the husband spending the week's wages on aguardiente and then going home to beat on his wife who asked for money for groceries. Some excuse! In the U.S. "the reasons" can be more sophisticated--cocaine, meth, uppers and downers--but it's the same phenomenon. How many prostitutes die by violence perpetrated by their pimps or johns? Abuse can attack all social levels too--the only difference is that in the U.S. the well-to-do can afford to send their transgressors to rehab.

Rose's book is a troubling portrayal of the violence that is often associated with abuse. I have touched on abuse in Full Medical (the Defense Secretary's wife) and The Midas Bomb (Sgt. Castilblanco's defense of an abused wife when the detective was a SEAL stationed in Korea). The Saudi ambassador in Scherzo Two of Soldiers of God laments the fundamentalist teachings that force his country to reject half their human resources, the Saudi women. The mother of the victim in that novel relates the story about how her Iraqi family disowned her and threatened to kill her for marrying an infidel.

Ms. Rose doesn't dwell on the causes of the abuse. I can understand that it would be a distraction from the plot flow. Moreover, there are too many "causes." I associate most abusers with rigid fundamentalist personalities with sociopathic tendencies. Religious causes can be found in the dogma of sects even in the U.S. The causes are so varied because abuse cuts through all social strata. However, Rose does hint at an important truism: abuse tends to run in families. One flipped out family member can set off a chain reaction through multiple generations. Kate even worries that Amanda's boy will turn out like his father and not his mother.

In some sense, An Uncertain Refuge is a feel-good book. Outcomes in real life are generally more complex and deadly. Our justice system seems incapable of handling abuse--it's only handled well when good people with common sense and good intentions step in to save the day. Otherwise, disaster can strike. If the woman is killed, we tsk-tsk and go on with our lives. If she kills her abuser, she ends up in jail, like the women in Massachusetts a few years back, and we forget about it. Like the media in Rose's book, our sensationalist reporters play up the violence and then drop the story. We need to think seriously about changing the way the justice system handles abuse cases. Perhaps Refuge will raise a few eyebrows and stimulate such change. Other writers can help by weaving it into their stories. Burying our heads in the sand is definitely not the solution!

Steven M. Moore
author of Survivors of the Chaos, blogger, and reviewer

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars COMPELLING AND MOVING May 26, 2011

By Elizabeth Lyon

Format:Kindle Edition

Carolyn J Rose has a way of gripping her readers from the first line and before you know it, you're staying up into the wee hours. The plot turns on the protection of Way-Ray, the nine-year-old son of a woman whose violent husband stalks her to a safe house. The story unfolds in Kate Dalton's viewpoint, who in protecting the woman from the assault, soon finds herself in the position of fleeing with Way-Ray.

I fell in love with the heroic adult characters, who have wounds in their past that keep them from trusting themselves and breaking their isolation--until they face the greater need of saving Way-Ray. "An Uncertain Refuge" struck an emotional chord in me similar to "Pay It Forward." An innocent child awakens the adults around him to a larger truth. Way-Rae is a child in jeopardy, but other characters have their hearts and souls on the line.

Most of all, this novel has a strong pulse that drives this story with high stakes and carries the reader through to the final page.

More About the Author

Carolyn J. Rose is the author of several novels, including Hemlock Lake, Through a Yellow Wood, An Uncertain Refuge, Sea of Regret, A Place of Forgetting, and No Substitute for Murder. The sequel to that, No Substitute for Money, will be out in the late spring of 2013. She also penned a young adult fantasy, Drum Warrior, with her husband, Mike Nettleton.

She grew up in New York's Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, logged two years in Arkansas with Volunteers in Service to America, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She founded the Vancouver Writers' Mixers and is an active supporter of her local bookstore, Cover to Cover. Her interests are reading, gardening, and not cooking.