An Appalling Betrayal of Trust

This story is a saga about two young people who are inevitably drawn close together like two magnets who eventually become friends with benefits after discovering their hopes, dreams and aspirations for a promising future together are uniquely aligned with one another. The male protagonist in the novel is engaged in pursuing a monumental task of building up a lucrative, cattle enterprise like his forefathers had accomplished in Montana. He gambles and ends up taking a risk in purchasing an old, dilapidated homestead in a land, auction, estate sale which was located within the Panhandle National Forest in northern Idaho. The lovely debutante in this melodrama enters the picture as an attractive, blond maiden who is a female jockey who is assisting her father in running a horse ranch where they raise, train, breed and race thoroughbred horses at Emerald Downs near Seattle. This is the story about virtue in peril, dealing with her trials and tribulations in discovering where a girl's heart and future belongs in the tapestry of passion, hope and courage, an inexorable struggle for redemption. The need to purchase some saddle horses to assist in driving his Black Angus cattle up to the government, range pastures for summer grazing was the primary impetus for the meeting with the female debutante as the rancher desperately needed saddle horses. One lonely night sleeping alone in the comfort of her bed, she was abruptly awakened by a mysterious intruder who snuck into the bedroom and repeatedly raped her and subsequently disappeared in the darkness without leaving a trace of evidence behind him. As a result, she knew she ought to report the incident to the police and then run quickly off to the local hospital for a medical examination. Investigators would ultimately have to interview all the possible, male suspects who work or reside on both her husband's and her father's ranch during the last year. Regardless, the police would be waiting patiently to receive the DNA results before determining whether the alleged assault was perpetrated as a forcible rape or whether it was an amorous rendezvous for two consenting conspirators who planned, organized and flawlessly executed a clandestine tryst while the husband was away at a convention.

-- Richard Lee Liddell