Sweet Savage Eden (North American Woman) [Mass Market Paperback]

Heather Graham (Author)

Book Description

Series: North American Woman | Publication Date: February 1, 1989

From bestselling author Heather Graham comes the first book in her new North American Woman series--an early 17th-century tale of love between Jassy, the illegitimate daughter of an actress and a Duke, and Jamie, an arrogant nobleman, who leave England and journey together to the New World.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Dell (February 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440202353
• ISBN-13: 978-0440202356
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.8 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #680,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

New York Times and USA Today best selling author, Heather Graham was born somewhere in Europe and kidnapped by gypsies when she was a small child. She went on to join the Romanian circus as a trapeze artist and lion tamer. When the circus came to South Florida, she stayed, discovering that she preferred to be a shark and gator trainer.

Not really.

Heather is the child of Scottish and Irish immigrants who met and married in Chicago, and moved to South Florida, where she has spent her life. (She has, at least, been to the Russian circus in Moscow, where she wished she was one of the incredibly talented and coordinated trapeze artists.) She majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, back-up vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write. Her first book was with Dell, and since then, she has written over one hundred and fifty novels and novellas including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, horror, and Christmas family fare.

She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty-five languages, and has had over seventy-five million books in print. She has been honored with awards from Walden Books, B. Dalton, Georgia Romance Writers, Affaire de Coeur, Romantic Times, the Lifetime Achievement Award from RWA and more. Heather has also become the proud recipient of the Silver Bullet from Thriller Writers. Heather has had books selected for the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild, and has been quoted, interviewed, or featured in such publications as The Nation, Redbook, Mystery Book Club, People and USA Today and appeared on many newscasts including Today, Entertainment Tonight and local television.

Heather loves travel and anything that has to do with the water, and is a certified scuba diver. She also loves ballroom dancing. Each year she hosts the Vampire Ball and Dinner theater at the RT convention raising money for the Pediatric Aids Society and in 2006 she hosted the first Writers for New Orleans Workshop to benefit the stricken Gulf region. She is also the founder of "The Slush Pile Players", presenting something that's almost like entertainment for various conferences and benefits. Married since high school graduation and the mother of five, her greatest love in life remains her family, but she also believes her career has been an incredible gift, and she is grateful every day to be doing something that she loves so very much for a living.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historically Correct, October 8, 2005

By 

C. McCormick "qut Duj be'" (Porterville, Calif. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweet Savage Eden (North American Woman) (Mass Market Paperback)

I am a Pamunkey Indian and I wish to commend Ms. Graham for her research and correct use of the Tribe in her book. This is the ONLY book I have ever seen that uses the Tribe name and the history of our people. We are the forgotten tribe. I love to read historical romances and this is one of the best I have ever read. I had to buy the book again as my last copy began to fall apart from my constant rereading of it.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A nostalgic disappointment., December 25, 2008

By 

Annaith - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sweet Savage Eden (North American Woman) (Mass Market Paperback)

I read this for the first time as a teenager--pilfered it from the paperbacks section of the library, actually. As a hormone-ruled young man confused about his sexuality and fascinated by the dangerous sensuality of Jamie Cameron, I really enjoyed the book as a teen. Now, over a decade later, I picked up a new copy of the book and found myself shaking my head in annoyance over the same character I'd found so fascinating. Overall the story lacks in many areas, but it's the relationship between Jassy and Jamie that baffles me. Their conversations are unrealistic (and that's after the typical suspension of disbelief one wields when diving into historical romance) and utterly lacking in any flow or chemistry, and Jamie is pointlessly cruel and stubborn in ways that do nothing to flesh out his character. You don't expect romance-novel males to be realistic; that's part of the fun. They're a fantasy. I just can't imagine Jamie Cameron as anyone's ideal fantasy, when he offers very little to make him sympathetic--and very little to make him believably strong and powerful other than his own wanking on about how he takes what he wants and does what he wants. Any compassion or kindness that he shows in an effort to make him sympathetic to the reader just comes off as a sneering, smirking game to toy with Jassy even more. He displays little to no remorse when it's demonstrated that his treatment of her, in many cases, is wholly unjustified. The part near the end, after the (SPOILER) birth of their son, when things seem to be getting better until he abruptly decides to distance himself and dismiss Jassy back to England really just comes out of nowhere and seems to make little sense and have little motivation other than the author's desire to create one more rift between them that's solved by the final conflict.

I'm not a big fan of the flat, one-dimensional portrayal of characters such as Hope or Powan, either--and I'm not saying that just because I'm part Native. I'm looking at them from a professional writer's perspective, not an offended Native American's (the research put into that aspect was actually quite good, and I have to agree with the tribe member's review there). It's the characters themselves and not the depiction of their culture that lacks.

The sex is steamy, even if full of the vague euphemisms one expects. (Isn't that part of the fun of romance novels? Removing the messier, more awkward aspects of sex to focus on the better parts?) Oddly, as a boy I didn't like Jassy much. Now that I'm older I find myself enjoying her more, down to the point of feeling terrible for her after the way Jamie treated her despite the fact that she's a bit of a stubborn, stuck-up brat. I also loved Elizabeth and would have loved to see more of her character. Jassy's half-brother, on the other hand, seemed to suffer from the same melange of unnecessary cruelty and jerkishness as Jamie, while people constantly excused him for it. Yes, sometimes characters will be jerks, just as sometimes real people are jerks. But these two lacked reason and depth, and the story was presented as if their actions were supposed to make sense when, in truth, they didn't.

I'm rating this 3/5 for three reasons:

1. This book introduced me to Heather Graham, who's become one of my favorite romance novelists;
2. despite my complaining, parts of it were enjoyable (and I don't just mean the passionately depicted sex); and
3. sheer nostalgia, as despite finding more to criticize with age, this book brought back many fond memories of my youth.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Words can't describe, July 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sweet Savage Eden (North American Woman) (Mass Market Paperback)

This was one of the first romance novels I had ever read. The first time i read it...I thought no book could ever come close. That was about 4 years ago...the other day I went back and read it again. I was expecting myself to be dissapointed...your tastes change. But the book was exactly the same. I still loved it! The characters...the settings...the story...like nothing I've ever read. I've told all my friends about this book, they all loved it. And I just had to write an online review! So if you're even slightly interested...do buy this book. You won't regret it.