About the Book

Book: When the Mountain Crumbled (A Day to Remember Book 4)

Author: Angela K Couch

Genre: Historical Christian Fiction

Release date: September, 2024

Though Mountains Crumble, Hope Is Not Buried

Enjoy a series of 6 exciting novels featuring historic disasters that transformed landscapes and multiple lives. Whether by nature or by man, these disasters changed history and were a day to be remembered.

Discipline and rules are the foundation on which Samantha Ingles has built her life—the life of a spinster schoolteacher in a small mining town in the Canadian Rockies. All that crumbles from her grasp when part of a mountain crashes down on their community.

Constable David Harty has little patience for the strict schoolmarm but has no choice but to leave his three young nieces in her care while he tries to discover the fate of his brother. Already, the girls have lost their mother and brothers to the landslide and require comfort and love while they await the fate of their father, possibly buried in the coal mine.

With the mountain looming over their heads threatening more lives, and the town scrambling to save who they can from the rubble, can hearts find healing—both for their own sakes and the children in their care?

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My Thoughts:

A Day to Remember series continues with this story about a deadly avalanche in the Canadian Rockies. I have to say, that reading this story, especially after all the hurricane disaster news that has affected so many, really made it hard and caused this tragedy to feel so tangible. These day tragedy's that this series highlights is doing a good service of reminding us of the tragedies of the past.

Like I said, this one was a particularly hard one to read through, due to the avalanche, the many souls lost, the miraculous way some were saved, and just the feelings of suffocation and entrapment some of our characters experienced. However, within the horrific accounts of this disaster, there was hope. The author gives us a beautiful romantic story in the midst of such tragedy.

If you can think of a couple more unsuited than uptight, or so it seems schoolteacher and spinster Samantha Ingles and somewhat severe, free as a bird, or so his family thinks, Mounty Nathan Stanford, let me know. These two could hardly stand each other. So there falling in love was a pleasant escape from the horrors that they and Nathan's orphaned nieces faced. I actually had to keep checking to see if this was a romance, because their interactions with one another was something else. But oh boy, when they decide they like each other, so worth the wait.

So, though this is a hard read, there is a shining hope and love that pours out of this story.

I was provided a copy of this novel from the publisher. I was not required to post a positive review, and all views and opinions are my own.

About the Author

To keep from freezing in the great white north, Angela K Couch cuddles under quilts with her laptop. Winning short story contests, being a semi-finalist in ACFW’s Genesis Contest, and a finalist in the 2016 International Digital Awards also helped warm her up. As a passionate believer in Christ, her faith permeates the stories she tells. Her martial arts training, experience with horses, and appreciation for good romance sneak in as well. When not writing, she stays fit (and toasty warm) by chasing after five munchkins.

More from Angela

Around 4:10 am on April 29^th, 1903, approximately 110 million metric tonnes of limestone broke from the side of Turtle Mountain and crashed down into the Crowsnest Valley, burying ranches, camps, an active coal mine, and a part of the town of Frank. What has come to be known as “Frank Slide” was the deadliest landslide in North American recorded history, claiming the lives of more than seventy people.

I first visited Frank Slide as a child, as it is located only an hour’s drive from my home. All I remember from that experience was the heaps of rocks and boulders, and the story of the mine-horse named Charlie. When driving through the Crowsnest Pass as an adult, I began to appreciate the terror of that night and the horrible loss of life. Not until expanding my research while writing this story, did the miracles of Frank shine through everything horrible that happened. That became the focus of my story, When the Mountain Crumbled.

I find our own lives follow a similar pattern. Tragedy, hardship, sickness and disappointment… but do we see the miracles?