River's End is a romance novel with all the accouterments of that genre: graphically written sex scenes, characters who are brilliant, physically handsome, sensitive yet assertive. The male lover is strong, right thinking, and a loving member of a strong family. The heroine is beautiful and brilliant but terribly scarred by the horrific childhood experience of discovering her murdered mother and her blood-stained father on that terrible night in their huge Malibu house. Nevertheless, she has grown to be a woman in charge of her sexuality, and somewhat experienced but certainly not promiscuous. She is immensely capable of such wilderness skills as facing down a cougar, hiking the steepest trails with ease and skill, identifying any tree, plant, or critter in her forest, pitching a tent, and catching and cooking a splendid dinner of fish. She is Eve, firmly and capably in charge of her part of the...