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4.0 out of 5 stars
What if you could travel through time?, July 8, 2004
(...)Cally Sullivan's inheritance didn't cover all her expenses and her brother, Donnie's, so she works part-time in real estate sales and full time as an author. Only recently has she accepted the fact that she has fallen in love with Drake Butler. Butler is Cally's employer and he could have been Wyatt Earp's twin had he been born in the right time period. He hasn't admitted it even to himself, but he's in love with her. The only thing stopping them from dating is one of his own rules: Employees are no longer allowed to date the management or each other. Drake's instinct is all fired up when he drives Cally home after the company Christmas party. Seems someone's been in her house. Though nothing was stolen, one of her bedroom windows was open, water was on the floor near the back door and then there's the antique bullet laying on the ground real mysterious-like. On top of the strange break in, Cally has to live with fact that her ex-fiancé and her best friend, Sheri, had an affair and that her disabled brother may be her responsibility the rest of her life. Now, her Aunt May is ill, according to May's stepson, Raymond. Cally is also having nightmares about a man from the Old West. Without delay, Cally books a flight to Arizona and rents a car so she can be with her aunt and do research on her next novel. She recalls Raymond's warning about recent hijackings between Phoenix and Tuscan, even Benson and Bisbee. Seems Sheri was one of the many people who disappeared. Little does she know that she's headed to Southern Arizona where numerous tornadoes have touched down and there have been flash flooding alerts. Her aunt dies and after the funeral she learns that May left her and Donnie a cabin. Cally considers moving to Arizona and seeing to it that Donnie is cared for in a health care facility. After Cally checks into a small motel in Tombstone, a violent thunderstorm hits the town. She enters Big Nose Kate's Saloon, the same one Wyatt Earp played poker in. When the storm hits, she finds herself holding Wyatt's deck of cards. She crawls out from under a poker table and gazes into the eyes of Doc and Wyatt. She passes out from the shock and the force of her unique travels, later waking to find herself in the arms of Wyatt and he swears she's the very image of his dead wife. Drake's search for Cally has him registering at a hotel. He then heads over to a store that had been a saloon and billiard parlor for years. The news indicates a tornado warning as he heads to Big Nose Kate's, once the Grand Hotel were some of the most famous and notorious men in the West had stayed. When Cally wakes, she realizes that she has somehow traveled back in time. What she is experiencing is no reenactment. From Sheri, who happened to land in this forsaken town, she learns the truth about her ex-fiancé and that he's here. In fact, he's hooked up with the Clantons, Frank Stilwell and Johnny Ringo. Sheri has lived in the past for a few years and has made a living in a not so reputable way, but hey a woman has got to eat and have a place to sleep. The tornadoes are causing quite an obstacle in many lives. People from the past are landing in the future and people from the future are ending up in the past. Drake is among the second group of shocked individuals and he's got his heart set on finding Cally and the way back home. WYATT'S DECK is a book that demands your attention with characters being bounced into the past and future. Weslynn McCallister deserves a pat on the back for being able to write outside of the time travel norm. Her characters are dimensional and you care what happens to them with each challenge they meet head on. Thank goodness we weren't born in Tombstone back in 1881 around the time of the shootout at O.K. Corral. Oh, and the cover artist did a fantastic job. The character's eyes alone tell a story and you want to listen. The only thing I believe that could have been a plus would have been more interaction between Cally, Doc and Wyatt. Four out of five antique Colt 4.5's
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