Flight to Coorah Creek by Janet Gover
Author Connections:
Personal Site | @janet_gover | Facebook
Converse via: #ChocLit & #FlightToCoorahCreek
Illustrated By: Berni Stevens
@circleoflebanon | Writer | Illustrator
Genre(s): Fiction | Romance | Adventure
the Australian Outback | Second Chances
Published by: ChocLitUK, 7 March, 2014
Available Formats: Paperback, E-Book
Page Count: 306
Acquired Book By:
I am a ChocLit reviewer who receives books of my choice in exchange for honest reviews! I received a complimentary copy of “Flight to Coorah Creek” from ChocLit via IPM (International Publisher’s Marketing) in exchange for an honest review! I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Inspired to Read:
Mind you, the mere fact that this story is set inside an area of a far-off continent that has both intrigued me and enchanted me since I was a young child was only partially the reason for my selection of receiving this particular book for review! I will go into my appreciation for the Outback in a moment, but part of what I wanted to relay is that I always loved stories of medical practice until I reached my mid-twenties where a lot of what I was either watching through tv serials, motion pictures, or reading in novels was becoming a bit much for me emotionally. I even attempted to watch a Canadian tv serial (via HuLu): Combat Hospital except I had to bow out after two or three episodes as clearly the series was wrecking my emotional heart.
I’m the girl who dreams of obtaining the first five years of ER (my beloved medical drama of my teenage years) and the ‘Martini’s & Medicine’ special boxed set of M* A* S* H (my beloved medical drama of my twenties) yet being able to re-alight inside medical narratives has been a bit of a difficulty I had not felt I would ever experience. The only solace I had is that perhaps I OD’d on the stories themselves and had to step away in order to return. This is why as I learnt of the inclusion of the air ambulance story thread for Flight to Coorah Creek, internally the wheels of curiosity started to click together and unite. Back in late Spring, whilst hosting the #ChocLitSaturdays chat which is the sister companion to this blog feature, I knew I had made the right choice as Ms. Gover happily gave out tidbits of her research and writing process to stitch the story together. Ever since that lovely conversation I have been attempting to dig back into the heart of the novel and attach myself into the world therein.
Dear hearts, kindly forgive my lack of focus and attention, as the time between late Spring and late Summer were a bit consuming for me personally. I wanted to soak into the story when my heart and spirit could allow me the grace of full attention and focus. I never want to rush a ChocLit novel, and it is a grace for me as a book blogger the publisher has such a kind heart understanding how life can intercede on a blogger’s reading life. Their authors are equally accepting in this regard, which has not only encouraged me but taken away the guilt I’ve had for the lost hours between then and now. Coincidentally, we’re not even going to acknowledge I’m posting this a week later than intended as the previous Saturday was a mixture of computer technical issues and a myriad sea of stress. Notwithstanding all the lightning storms occurring at such a fast clip over the past fortnight or so, to boggle this book blogger’s mind with a fierce vexation!
Book Synopsis:
What happens when you can fly, but you just can’t hide?
Only Jessica Pearson knows the truth when the press portray her as the woman who betrayed her lover to escape prosecution. But will her new job flying an outback air ambulance help her sleep at night or atone for a lost life?
Doctor Adam Gilmore touches the lives of his patients, but his own scars mean he can never let a woman touch his heart.
Runaway Ellen Parkes wants to build a safe future for her two children. Without a man – not even one as gentle as Jack North.
In Coorah Creek, a town on the edge of nowhere, you’re judged by what you do, not what people say about you. But when the harshest judge is the one you see in the mirror, there’s nowhere left to hide.
Author Biography:
Janet lives in Surrey with her English husband but grew up in the Australian outback surrounded by books. She solved mysteries with Sherlock Holmes, explored jungles with Edgar Rice Burroughs and shot to the stars with Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. After studying journalism at Queensland University she became a television journalist, first in Australia, then in Asia and Europe. During her career Janet saw and did a lot of unusual things. She met one Pope, at least three Prime Ministers, a few movie stars and a dolphin. Janet now works in television production and travels extensively with her job.
Janet’s first short story, The Last Dragon, was published in 2002. Since then she has published numerous short stories, one of which won the Elizabeth Goudge Award from the Romantic Novelists’ Association. She has previously published three novels with Little Black Dress, Flight to Coorah Creek is her debut with Choc Lit and Bring Me Sunshine her first Choc Lit Lite ebook novella.
The Bush | Outback as a setting from Australia:
I suppose you could say that I am not unlike most Americans who are deeply curious about the Australian Outback and life ‘Down Under’ as it was regularly referred to in my youth. I grew up on hearty Australian classics such as “Crocodile Dundee” and my beloved horse dramas “The Man from Snowy River” and “Return to Snowy River”; all of which left a deep impression on a young girl’s heart. I always wanted to seek out more Australian Literature, and despite a few start/stops to unearthing authors who penned stories set there and/or were Australian authors outright, I never did get the proper chance to read their stories! One of the goals I had set out for myself as a book blogger was to sort out a way to read all the lovely stories in fiction that had excited my heart and lit a fire inside my imagination. The best gift whilst being a reviewer for ChocLit, is that they have writers submitting stories from different regions of the world. This particular story is a case-in-point as much as my previous readings of The Reluctant Bride (by an Australian author) and Close to the Wind (by an New Zealand author).
The stark and ominous setting of the story is the Outback itself — a holds no bar locale, where even the strongest bloke and gal might find a bit beguiling to encroach a living out of. The Outback is a lot like the American West, a land who never fully gave itself into being civilised anymore than it stopped being wild. The animals and natural make-up of the land has survived without hardly any interference from man nor man’s pursuit of his own endeavours which led him to go there. For myself, I especially love how the Outback was left to it’s natural graces and natural inclinations of evolving into what it was destined to be without the touch of man to muddle it. There are so many beautiful places that we have the tendency to wreck simply by overtaking what is not meant to be conquered that the few places which can shine as their naturally allowed is a celebration to me. I always had a conservation mind-set, and a determined passion for preservation, which is why soaking into this novel was such a leap of joy; to read the passages in the opening sequences where Jess and Adam are flying further into the remote bits of the Outback to save a life.
Visually Gover does a stunning job of descriptive narrative and lends an eye for sight for those of us who have not yet been blessed to visit Australia. She pulls the setting of the locale forward through her story and creates a tangible vortex of an experience for the reader to directly integrate into ‘where’ Flight to Coorah Creek takes them. The reddening of the soil, however, flickered back inside my own memory to the soil I found in Alabama. An enriched red clay that was never beloved by locals but was quite the curious discovery for a girl who grew up on sandy beaches within the breath of the Gulf States!
My Review of Flight to Coorah Creek:
Vibrantly sharp and startling heroic is the opening sequence starting this novel off with a sparked attention to detail and the intensity of a soul-renewing hope for a future path not yet grown into sight of being. The two main characters who introduce themselves to you in a strong yet nonchalant way are Jess Pearson and Adam Gilmore (M.D.). Each of them are harbouring secrets from each other, as their emotional hearts are etched on the surface of their beings, but what drove me to endear myself to them at the jumpstart is their cadence for their jobs. Jess is a pilot who knows her worth of salt in a cockpit and Gilmore has a determined grit to him to access and rescue any patient in dire need of medical attention. They are both passionately astute to what is important to each of them, but it is the manner in which they are brought together that clicked their story together for me.
I love any writer who can fuse drama, heart, and medicine together in such a way as to leave you quite on pins to not only turnt the page forward in a story but to give your heart a quick pulse of excitement about what is going to be greeting you in the next chapter! The animated tension of the dusk flight to a remote outpost and the landing of a plane on a strip that was barely a blink on a screen of sight gave me a full score adventure and I was only within the opening arm of the novel! By the time you arch yourself into the full scope of the story, your in for a particularly wicked treat of aeroplane action sequences interspersed with the beauty of small towne living on the edge of nowhere! The Outback is painted with an effervescent glow of raw and untamed land bowing to the few dots of civilisation that can be carved at its edge.
If I felt that the strength of the character arc in both Jess and Adam were going to hit a heavy punch of emotion and drama into my heart, I was not quite prepared for Ellen, Jack, and Sister Luke! Each of them carries with them a cardinal truth of a past they do not want to share or bring out into the light where others could judge them. Only Sister Luke had the blessings of her faith to guide her heart and lead each of them to a place where resolution and the calming grace of a second chance could even be considered. Ellen has the strength of ten oxen within her, even if life has dealt her a crushing hand up until her experiences of living in a towne called Coorah Creek! What I loved about her immersion into Coorah Creek is that it was dependent on community and the ties of a community embracing those who chose to live there. To become an active member of their world, and to make her own way whilst discovering what she has to give back at the same time! I loved how her wicked sense for cookery leads her into a new chapter of her life, yet gives her roots to a world she never felt she could be blessed enough to find.
Jack is the typical bloke who never quite found the right woman to settle down with but had the heart of gold; a man whose central focus is on nurturing and encouragement. I loved how his genuine affection and dedication to his job at servicing Jess’s air ambulance give his character a bit of depth. As too, his interactions with Ellen’s young children, and the way in which he knew Sister Luke always had everyone’s best intentions at heart. Sister Luke is the kind of nun you wish you could befriend, as her steadfast faith and her belief in each person’s interior spirit of soul is a shining reflection of her life of prayer. I loved seeing how this elder woman could affect each life she touched in Coorah Creek, with simple words of guidance and friendship.
The transformation of Jess’s character from being wounded and injured in her spirit and conscience; to being a freer sense of who she is in the end of the story was a beautiful testament of how you can traverse the most difficult of personal circumstances and walk out the other end a bit wary but not jaded. I think for me, that was the one aspect I was hoping not to happen — not to have any of the characters who were struggling with rebuilding their lives to become jaded and hardened by the events they could not prevent nor run away from simply by changing their zip codes. I liked the bold determination in Jess, as much as the more quiet survival instincts of Ellen; the two women had a lot in common with each other, but they approached their healing processes differently. They each gave dimension to the layers of the story, and the blokes around them gave them time and space to sort everything out.
Adam was the most complicated character, as he was walled inside his own mind, encapsulated by fear and by memories that he was never far from remembering. He is given the time he needs to work through his anguish and his emotional baggage, which endeared him more to me than if he had a quicker turnaround. I liked walking with him on his journey, seeing how he saw everything and understanding the depth of his pain. Not all afflictions are easy to see even if they are visible to our eyes, there are wounds which go beyond what the heart does not always want to accept. Gover gave Adam an identifiable outlet to his personal strife by making him a doctor; thus allowing him to focus on others as a method to help recede his own battles by alleviating the pain in others. I felt as though he became a doctor as a way to give back gratitude to the doctors and nurse who aided him when he felt the most forsaken.
Being in the cockpit and the passenger seats of the private jet whilst flying with Jess, Adam, and Sister Luke was quite the joy for the girl who grew up loving the inertia of take-off inside of a plane! I loved the whole world of the air ambulance unit and the tight group of colleagues who cared more about the well-being of each other than any scuttlebutt that could wreck their impressions of each other. The tension of practicing medicine on the fringes of society, and of settling in a towne where all the warts of your flawed character can be known was the best setting for placing us into the lives of characters who you fall in love with whilst reading!
Creating a realistic impression of the Australian Outback is Janet Gover’s gift:
I honestly could not stop reading Flight to Coorah Creek, and in doing so, left myself at a bit of a loss as to how to properly leave behind my esteem and love of the story! I simply did not want to leave my comfy chair and make my way to my keyboard! I absorbed myself so fully into this story, as I had ached to get into the heart of it for most of Spring & Summer, that by the time I found the pages flying past my fingers, there simply was not one second to spare! I was thankful to soak into a light medical drama which did not affect me as medical dramas generally do these days (ooh, how I miss reading them!), as I was quite fascinated with Gover’s ability to take research & first hand experience (as she had disclosed in a #ChocLitSaturdays : chat on Twitter that she had experienced an air ambulance service) and turnt it into such a believable and commendable tale of second chances, new beginnings, and atonement!
The subtle way she included what I would generally think of as a ‘third’ character: the Australian Outback itself was an alarming treat for your senses! And, how interesting that most of what was spoken about are part of the natural beauty I appreciate myself, even if the frying in the laser sharp heat of the sun might not be as keen, it was how she turnt the natural world into a visual backdrop I appreciated the most. The Outback was also quite the character, as the winds would shift and reveal a few things about where all of these lovely characters had settled into a sense of home and stability of calm. I honestly cannot wait to read another novel where she takes me on another epic journey of an adventure!
I have seen many a motion picture which involves drama on a plane, but I must say, Gover had me on the very edge of my seat and I nearly forgot to breathe whilst reading the passages where the flying was anything but routine!
This book review is courtesy of ChocLitUK,
Previously I have happily hosted ChocLit Authors on Jorie Loves A Story:
Mark your calendars!
*NEWSFLASH* : Each Saturday henceforth onward from here in August shall feature a new ChocLit book review! For the updated schedule, please visit my Bookish Events page! The next novel I will be reading & sharing my thoughts on will be “Romancing the Soul” by Sarah Tranter!!
For those who are unware of #ChocLitSaturdays, the chat, we meet regular @ 11am EST / 4pm London at http://www.tchat.io/rooms/choclitsaturdays! I created the chat to encourage new readers to discover not only the ChocLit novels I am showcasing & reading through my blog feature of the same name, but to help draw a close knit group of Romance booklovers, writers, and appreciators together for an hour of solid friendship and wicked sweet conversation!
All are welcome to attend! Tweet me or leave a comment in this thread for further details!
{SOURCES: Author photograph, Author Biography, Book Synopsis, and Book Cover were provided by ChocLitUK and were used by permission. Book Review badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Jorie Loves A Story badge created by Ravven with edits by Jorie in FotoFlexer. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets were embedded due to codes provided by Twitter.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.
The ‘live reading’ tweets I shared as I read & reviewed “Flight to Coorah Creek”:
{ favourite & Re-tweet if inspired to share }
.@janet_gover My full #bookreview of #FlightToCoorahCreek will be the spotlighted @ChocLituk tomorrow for #ChocLitSaturdays! #Romancenovel
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) August 15, 2014
.@janet_gover going to be soaking in the final half of #FlightToCoorahCreek! Featured this week on #ChocLitSaturdays! @ChocLituk #amreading
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) August 14, 2014
So pleased you are liking #FlightToCoorahCreek Jorie. Keep the tissues handy ;-) @JLovesAStory @RobynRozeAuthor
— janetgover (@janet_gover) August 13, 2014
.@janet_gover sure knows how to grab #readers into #FlightToCoorahCreek! The title alone has double-meaning & I'm at the start! #amreading
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) August 12, 2014
.@janet_gover I'm heading back into the #AustralianOutback, soaking into #amreading #FlightToCoorahCreek! Lightning & #techissues delayed me
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) August 12, 2014
I am also dipping back into #ContemporaryRomance: #FlightToCoorahCreek & the #FrenchTwistSeries are my #amreading wkend #choclitsaturdays
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) August 9, 2014
#amreading the final bits to #FlightToCoorahCreek, an Australian Outback #Romance novel by #ChocLit! :) Air ambulance, small towne, drama :)
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) August 16, 2014
Comments shared on Twitter:
Morning ladies. Thanks for a fab review Jorie – so glad you liked it. Did I make you cry? @liz_fenwick @JLovesAStory
— janetgover (@janet_gover) August 16, 2014
@JLovesAStory great review! @janet_gover
— Liz Fenwick (@liz_fenwick) August 16, 2014
@JLovesAStory Thank YOU for a fab review – your enthusiasm for my book shone through. I was touched. That’s why I write. #choclitsaturdays
— janetgover (@janet_gover) August 16, 2014
Exciting News which had me wicked happy:
.@janet_gover @PiaCCourtenay Oooh,ooh my! Leaping lizards! What wickedly smashing news! Esp #booklovers of #FlightToCoorahCreek! @ChocLituk
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) August 17, 2014
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