Looking forward to Ryan's Hand: Leila Meacham

      She's a retired English teacher who lives in San Antonio, Texas. I adored her book ROSES.  I liked TUMBLEWEEDS less and have not read SOMERSET.
     Leila's novel TITANS  is set in the early 1900's, the beginning of the oil boom in east Texas. That's why I bought it for my Kindle. I dream of being an oil baroness. I felt a kinship with the title.
    The characters are true to themselves and behave as one would expect in that era, though the pace of the novel was slowed considerably by especially polite behavior and well-kept secrets. While secrets are interesting in a novel, the honorable characters kept the secrets and because of that, the lack of resolution, lack of forward action became frustrating. Much narration was needed to keep the reader from losing the thread of the story, but the narration was tedious and caused the novel to drag.
     The novel's touch points for me were family dynamics, the oil business, love stories, and the hook: how in the world the complications inherent in the first section of the book would play out.
     Meacham confesses that keeping multiple characters active in two settings with multiple story lines became overwhelming. I felt the weight.
     At the end, the story lines were all tied up in a neat package. I did not get to experience the concluding high drama and deserved to do so after going through all the plot twists. I wanted excitement; I wanted a couple of the bad girls to get what was coming to them and I wanted to experience the thrill. I missed the emotion of a family reunion, after such a long story to get the fragments together.
     Mrs. Meacham has a new book coming out in July, 2016. I'll probably buy Ryan's Hand, because another captivating book like ROSES might be within the pages of her next novel.