Ransomed Dreams

John (Safe Harbor series) sets her new novel in the world of diplomacy. Sheridan Montgomery is the wife of Eliot Montgomery, ambassador to Venezuela. When an assassin’s bullets cripple Eliot and wound his wife, the traumatized couple retreats from the world to an off-the-map hamlet in Mexico. Sheridan is called from there when her father, a U.S. congressman from whom she is estranged, is dying. She returns to her family home in suburban Chicago to confront her past and make some decisions about her present, which includes her atrophied marriage to an invalid. The tangled relationships are engrossing and evolving, especially between Sheridan and her sister, Calissa, and between Sheridan and Luke Traynor, the government man who saved her life in Venezuela and returns to complicate her life. The criminal elements in the plot are less compelling than the human elements. The religion element required in Christian fiction is unobtrusive and natural to a story about healing. A thoughtful and engaging novel. (July)