Linda Regula

Wildflowers Don't Care Where They Grow Linda Regula

Publisher Marketing: Wildflowers Don't Care Where They Grow Columbine Archer, daughter of a wealthy Colorado mine owner, looks at the world through violet-colored eyes; yet, the rose-colored glasses her father's wealth provides has tinted the world she sees. Taught never to question its source, or the privileges money buys, "Colee," as she is called, grows up with protective, but self-absorbed parents; her only friends, household employees who have cared for her from birth. After receiving her degree from an exclusive girl's boarding school in Switzerland, instead of Colee returning to Colorado, the family jet flies to Charleston, West Virginia where her father, a widower, has not only relocated his mining company, but also remarried, and built a mansion overlooking the city. Working for Archer Mining, Colee is unconcerned when she discovers her father has began a new mining operation on a nearby mountain. Colee meets Ash Preston, a pilot, and the impassioned leader of a protest group trying to stop mountaintop removal (MTR), the highly profitable, but a destructive practice of mining coal spreading through the Appalachian Mountain range like a deadly virus. As their relationship deepens, he convinces Colee to view a mining site, up close and personal, from the air. Motivated by the horrific sight of a toxic sludge pond, held back by a poorly constructed earthen dam, three hundred feet above an Elementary School, Colee begins making decisions which not only change her opinion about MTR, but also how she views " pore mountain folk" whose homes and livelihoods are being destroyed by the poorly regulated industry. Eyes wide open, Colee begins a difficult journey to awareness which not only invites love, and new friends into her previously sheltered world, but also brings heartbreak and betrayal.