Even then, he’s not 100% certain he’s retired. As is figuring out what to do with his life, now that he’s retired from mountain climbing. He can manage grocery shopping, for example, but seeing his old team buddies is more of a challenge. She allows him months for his sorrow on Mount Everest, and now that he’s returned to Colorado it feels natural that he should start trying to interact with the world again. Clare works hard not to trivialize Harrison’s grief or his struggles with rejoining the world. I don’t think Kenzie’s plan – or the backstory surrounding it – would have worked nearly so well if Harrison hadn’t first spent time grieving by Mount Everest. While this does help Harrison re-enter the world, it also helps him realize what’s been under his nose all along, and he and Kenzie start dating. Hoping that caring for Gabby might lead Harrison to take better care of himself, Kenzie fosters the puppy with him, convincing Harrison that Gabby and Gizmo don’t get along well.

As his friend though, she’s concerned about how uninterested in life he’s become, so devises a plan to help Harrison.Īlthough she already has one fully trained S&R dog, Gizmo, Kenzie recently took on a new puppy to train, who she calls Gabby. She’s been a friend of Harrison’s and has long danced around other feelings for him but doesn’t want to date a climber.

Kenzie runs a local kennel and trains dogs for search and rescue, so has worked with the team for years. When Megs, leader of the team, manages to bring Harrison back home to Colorado, no one can see he’s still broken more clearly than Kenzie Morgan. Harrison was the only survivor and has spent the following year living with a group of Tibetan monks, struggling to come to terms with the fact that he survived when the others didn’t. Unfortunately, that came to a halt when his climbing party of four had an accident on Mount Everest.

A world-famous mountain climber, he makes his home in Scarlet Springs and works with the team when he can but spends much of his time scaling peaks around the globe. Harrison Conrad is one of the more famous members of the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team. Or not – if this is all you can get your hands on, it’s still worth picking up. Like those that come before it, Holding On technically stands alone, but there are enough references to the characters of past books that you may want to read the others first. Clare’s Colorado High Country series, set in the small town of Scarlet Springs. While I obviously like some books more than others, it seems anything she writes is at least a base level of good, and that certainly holds true for Holding On. Everything from her historicals, to suspense, to plain contemporary romance is an auto-buy for me.

Upon a Winter's Night by Pamela Clare