Diamonds at Dawn

"Are you there, Ama?" In "Diamonds at Dawn," seventeen-year old Ahzi Toadlena is adrift, and has been since she was nine. One winter morning she awoke shivering. At dawn, the fire had gone out in the hogan along with the warmth in her mother's arms. Page after torn notebook page chronicle Ahzi's grief, but on the eve of her eighteenth birthday something new is stirring in her: not one, but two crushes. Chadwick, a prep school boy and "fairweather" friend from Albuquerque, and Maverick, a charming misfit, have worked their way into her heart. And to make things worse her best friend, Cascade, is sweet on them too. Ahzi knows what she needs to do. She has to leave her grief behind. She climbs to the highest mesa on the ranch and casts her poems to the wind. In the weeks that follow, amidst concerns over fur trappers on the southwestern New Mexico ranch, a possible murder charge, and Ahzi's journey through grief, Cassie, Chad, and Maverick unwittingly piece the poems back together in a kind of secret map of the heart. The map shows Ahzi that falling in love doesn't mean abandoning the memory of her Ama nor her best friend. And the map is a key to all their healing. Will adventure and mystery on this southwestern New Mexico ranch resolve matters of the heart? Will Ahzi and Cassie's friendship last? "Diamonds at Dawn" is the promised sequel to "Diamonds at Dusk" and readers will not be disappointed.