Burnt Sienna - Softcover

My father was killed during World War II, shortly after I was born in 1943. My mother had difficulty raising me and at the same time holding a job, so she put me in an orphanage and later in a series of boarding homes. I grew up unsure of who I was, desperately in need of a father figure. Books and movies were my escape. Eventually I decided to be a writer and sought help from two men who became metaphorical fathers to me: Stirling Silliphant, the head writer for the classic TV series "Route 66" about two young men in a Corvette who travel America in search of themselves, and Philip Klass (whose pen name is William Tenn), a novelist who taught at the Pennsylvania State University where I went to graduate school from 1966 to 1970. The result of their influence is my 1972 novel, First Blood, which introduced Rambo. The search for a father is prominent in that book, as it is in later ones, most notably The Brotherhood of the Rose (1984), a thriller about orphans and spies. During this period, I was a professor of American literature at the University of Iowa. With two professions, I worked seven days a week until exhaustion forced me to make a painful choice and resign from the university in 1986. One year later, my fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, died from bone cancer, and thereafter my fiction tended to depict the search for a son, particularly in Fireflies (1988) and Desperate Measures (1994). To make a new start, my wife and I moved to the mountains and mystical light of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where my work changed yet again, exploring the passionate relationships between men and women, highlighting them against a background of action as in the newest, Burnt Sienna. To give his stories a realistic edge, he has been trained in wilderness survival, hostage negotiation, executive protection, antiterrorist driving, assuming identities, electronic surveillance, and weapons. A former professor of American literature at the University of Iowa, Morrell now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Masquerading as an action-packed thriller, this story is really a romance featuring Chase Malone, an internationally famous artist; Derek Bellasar, an international arms dealer; and Sienna Bellasar, Derek's fourth wife. Bellasar is a homicidal maniac who disposed of his first three wives when they aged. Gabrielle de Cuir reads enthusiastically and professionally but fails to find and maintain a unique voice for each character, making it difficult to follow the intricate plot. Chase falls in love with Sienna as he paints her and decides to free her from Bellasar's murderous control. De Cuir pours rage, fear, and love into the tense life-and-death situations. A surprise ending will capture listeners. S.C.A. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine