Lorrie Farrelly’s contemporary romantic suspense novel Dangerous  travels the rural roads that crisscross earthquake country; the dry rolling hills, chaparral, vineyards, undeveloped lands and higher mountain passes of a small lakeside California town. Burned-out Cam Starrett seeks haven from the tragedy, grief and anger in Chima Valley, a fictional town nestled in the hills inland from Santa Inez and Los Olivos, north of Lake Cachuma (called Lake Pasqual in the book).Here Cam encounters school guidance counselor Meredith Hayden, who recklessly abandons herself to the arms of the dangerous-looking ex-L.A. cop, and they begin their adventures.

“I wanted an area that had once been relatively isolated and homogeneous, but was now experiencing the growth of a diverse population,” Lorrie says. That’s a perfect setup for the escalating pattern of bigotry and violence that Cam and Merry discover threaten the lives of everyone in the community. Resistance to change, culture clashes, fear of those who are different, and the jockeying for power that goes on in a small California town were fascinating to me. The land and nature are in conflict as well. This is earthquake country, and fire is a constant and deadly threat in the dry hills of Southern and Central California”

Lorrie Farrelly

Lorrie has lived in California most of her life, graduating from the University of California at Santa Cruz, which is surrounded by beaches, small towns,  farmland, and redwood forests. “I was a counselor at camps in rural areas of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, and I’ve lived in and/or taught school in urban, suburban, and rural communities of Southern California.  So, while I did research some particular plot points, overall I had a very good idea already of the setting for Dangerous.”

“California’s rich, exciting, larger-than-life history comprises just about every life style imaginable. The huge diversity of landscapes and cultures set the stage for a vibrant if sometimes conflicted and clashing society.”

Add the ever-present natural dangers of earthquakes and fires, and you have a state that is literally always changing, always on the move. Every kind of story is possible here! 

Excerpt from Dangerous 

Cam started to pay more attention to the changing scenery along the rural highway. Pasturelands and vineyards, dusty groves of live oak and eucalyptus, and golden rolling hills dotted with farmhouses began to give way to smaller lots with modest homes, some in tracts sizable enough to qualify as neighborhoods.

A large trailer park sprawled in a gully to the south. Half a mile farther on, he spotted a volunteer fire station and a Water District headquarters housed in what looked to be an old school building.

He almost missed the city limits sign, half-hidden in a tangle of overgrown oleander bushes and flanked by speed limit warnings: Caution 25 mph, For your safety we use radar, Speed limit strictly enforced.

The corner of Cam’s mouth quirked up. At least something was as he expected. Chima Valley was a shameless speed trap.

Pressing on, he passed a park with a brackish pond, a soccer field, a baseball diamond, and a sun-bleached picnic area where several families staked out their territory for the day with tablecloths and balloons, and also with what seemed to Cam to be an impossible number of children tearing around madly in every direction.

At least now there were the beginnings of a real town. He passed a dairy, a wholesale nursery, a feed store, a ramshackle secondhand shop whose large, hand-lettered sign read “Antique Mall,” and, another quarter-mile down the road, a football field with concrete bleachers and stadium lights.

Just beyond the field was a sprawling compound of low, stucco buildings painted a sun-baked pink. Wryly, Cam thought the contractor had probably gotten the paint on a closeout sale for 50¢ a gallon and convinced the town council it was terra cotta.

A weathered strip of enormous, faded block letters marched across the front of the main building, a caricature of a snarling, spitting bobcat bursting through the center: Chima Valley High School, Home of the Wildcats.

Which mean Meredith Hayden, who was full of fire and didn’t even know it, and whose eyes held gathering storm clouds, was a Wildcat.

Cam groaned. He’d been so certain Chima Valley would be a haven of merciful peace and boredom. Yet, already that morning he’d been scared spitless several times over and had pulled his gun before even hitting the city limits. Then, to wrap it all up, he’d been stampeded by such a wild surge of elation and sheer, runaway lust that he’d nearly turned into a ravening Neanderthal.

Well, Chima Valley could start boring him any time now.

© by Lorrie Farrelly