Firebird is a novel that would like to have it both ways. It’s being marketed as straight fiction (so people will take it seriously), but it’s also clearly targeting the lucrative romance audience. Frankly, I don’t think either group would find it very appealing. Straight fiction fans are likely to be annoyed by the heavy-handed and overly sentimental prose. Romance fans would probably be more irritated by the ghastly hero. The women in the novel are more interesting, but they still can’t save it from being a near-total disaster.

Ethan Brown is a Yale-educated lawyer, and although he was offered jobs all over the country, he couldn’t help returning to his home in Kansas’ Flint Hills. Life has been pretty good to him there. He’s got a cute fiancee (who has a rich daddy) and a nice law practice going. Then Annette Zeldin shows up in town, and his whole world falls apart.

Annette is also a Kansas native, but unlike Ethan, she was only too glad to turn her back on her roots. She is an accomplished violinist who has been living in Paris, and her small daughter speaks primarily in French. She has returned home because her mother has died, and she decides to spend some time in the area while the will is being settled. She and her daughter live with her father, a man who is so unpleasant that he is unbelievable. He hates small children and probably kicks cats, too.

Although Ethan is engaged to his fiancee, Katie Anne, he just can’t keep away from the beautiful, cosmopolitan Annette. Soon the two are having an affair. Annette sneaks off every night to an old house to meet Ethan, and stays until early morning, which is another thing that made me shake my head. How many mothers would leave their small children all night with only a sadistic grandfather for company?

Eventually, Katie Anne finds out about Ethan’s affair – this is a small town after all. The events that take place after this point contain a number of surprises, one of which is of a paranormal nature. These happenings are mostly contrived and difficult to believe, but I’d rather not reveal them to those who have not read the book. These surprises do have one interesting result – Katie Anne becomes a likable and interesting character, and in the process saves the book from being a total failure.

Unfortunately, just when Katie Anne is becoming palatable, Ethan takes a real nose dive. At the beginning of the book he is merely bland and uninteresting. Then he graduates to cruel, self-centered, and vicious. By the end of the book he is so despicable that the happy ending comes as something of a disappointment.

If readers can get past the unlikable Ethan (which is no mean feat), they still have to deal with the prose, which is heavy-handed and flowery even by romance standards. The book is liberally sprinkled with obvious, silly analogies and scenes like the following:

That afternoon Annette revealed her past to Ethan. It was an intimate act tinged with eroticism, as are all revelations of past loves to new lovers, for Ethan and Annette were indeed lovers. Their love was in a nascent state, and it had been awaiting this moment, like some souls await their appointed hour of bodily birth with eager delight, knowing full well it means renunciation of harmony and peace.

Actually, the things she reveals to Ethan are bizarre in their own right. One of her revelations involves a kidnaped and tortured baby, which has absolutely nothing to do with the plot and is never spoken of again.

In the end, I’m not sure who the ideal audience for this book is, but I know it doesn’t include me. Even though it has some odd elements, it also feels like a bad rewrite of novels like Bridges of Madison County and A Thousand Acres. Even if you devour stories with rural charm, the maudlin prose and Ethan’s unsympathetic character make Firebird one to avoid.