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A Gentle Rain |
Kara Whittenbrook is an unlikely heiress. Down-to-earth and lovably quirky, she's never fit in with the stogy Whittenbrook clan of Connecticut. Growing up at her parents' rainforest preserve in Brazil, she has a quaintly off-beat view of life. Now her beloved parents have died in a plane crash, and Kara's learned a stunning truth. She was adopted. Her birth parents are Mac and Lily Tolbert. They live and work on a backwoods cattle ranch in northern Florida. Ranch owner Ben Thocco is running out of time and money. He's going to need a miracle in order to save the ranch and care for the likable crew of unusual hands he employs, including Kara's parents and his own fragile brother Joey. Kara, using a fake identity on the advice of her lawyer, gets a job at Ben's ranch in Fountain Springs, Florida, where her adventures include entering an unpredictable mare in a local horse show.
Kara Whittenbrook is an heiress, her mother and father are dead and as she grieves she finds hidden in an old chest, her adoption papers. All her life she has felt that she did not measure up, but her parents have always told her she exceeds their hopes and love. Now she goes to her Uncle who explains what had happened and why her parents had adopted a child. He also tells her that he knows who her birth parents are and that her adopted parents had wanted to tell her but they had died before they felt she was secure in herself to handle it.
Ben Thocco is a rancher in Northern Florida. Kara's real parents are Mac and Lily, they work for Ben. Ben's brother Joey has Downs Syndrome, his prognosis is not good. Mac and Lily are retarded, Mac's mother drank during pregnancy and Lily was severely shaken by a man friend of her grandmother. They have never mentioned having a child and Ben does not know about Kara. As a matter of fact most of Ben's hands have special needs, as well as some of his animals.
