Elizabeth Morris’s The First Horseman is one of my very favorite romance novels, a comfort read that has come to feel like a cherished friend over the years.

Rachel McKinnon and Allison Girard were best friends in their childhood days in Magnolia Grove, South Carolina. Rachel was the daughter of the town’s much revered minister, Allison the adopted child of two rigidly controlling parents. The two were inseparable all the way into adulthood, until the night Allison disappeared without a word, taking her four-year-old daughter, Rachel’s goddaughter Samantha, with her.

After two years without hearing anything, Rachel receives a call in the middle of the night from Allison, asking Rachel to meet her at the D.C. bus station and promising to tell her everything. But when Rachel arrives, she only finds Samantha, dressed as a boy with her hair dyed brown. She learns from the bus driver that Allison put “Sammy” on the bus and asked the driver to deliver the “boy” to Rachel, with a promise to join them later.

As both Rachel and Samantha anxiously await word from Allison, it becomes clear from the girl’s behavior that she and her mother have been on the run. When the deadline for Allison’s return passes without any news, Rachel’s search for answers takes her back to a place she never intended to go, back to Magnolia Grove. The truth about Allison’s disappearance lies somewhere in the small town, with Magnolia Grove’s powerful elite and secret history. And perhaps with Jericho Quaid, the town’s new doctor, who has an unusual interest in Rachel’s activities.

The book feels more like a regular short novel than the usual series romance. I could just as easily imagine it being shelved in the mystery section; it would hold up just as well. It unfolds differently than most series books, slowly setting up the situation and the characters much the way a single-title would instead of immediately revealing what the story is about. The hero doesn’t even arrive on the scene until more than forty pages into the book.

The story is told in first-person, a good choice for such a heroine-directed book, lending it a sense of intimacy and immediacy. The heroine’s warm, ingratiating voice slowly draws the reader into Rachel’s story as she tells it herself. It also makes the narration more interesting, because she has a really distinct, and often distinctly Southern, way of putting things, like when Rachel tells the reader she spent the day cleaning her house in preparation for Allison and Samantha’s arrival: “If cleanliness was next to godliness, the next few hours assured my reservation at the Pearly Gates.” Or when she catches a lucky break in the climax and tells us, “The guardian angel in charge of fools and babies that night must have been working an extra shift.”

This is a well-developed mystery, telling an intricate and complicated puzzle in a mere 250 pages. Yet it’s also one that doesn’t forget the characters, etching memorable personalities in a few deft strokes. Morris does such a wonderful job creating a vivid sense of this little town and its people. We’ve all read books set in small towns that seem typical or built on clichés. Though there are some elements here that are common to Southern Gothics, Magnolia Grove never seems like just another small town. It feels more real. So do the characters, from Samantha, that rare non-cloying child character with a fully realized personality of her own, to the most minor small town denizen Rachel meets again for the first time in years. There are so many tiny, perfect moments and exquisite character bits that have lingered in my memory over the years. Morris paints in the smallest of character details most authors wouldn’t dream of bothering with. It’s hard to think of another book where two characters making a toast using a linty candy bar can be such a sweet moment.

This is one book I’ve wanted to write a keeper review for ever since I started reviewing for AAR. I just wasn’t sure I could do it justice. I’m still not sure I have. I’ve read it numerous times over the years, always keeping a copy with me through several cross-country moves, yet it remains as involving and charming now as the first time I read it. I love this book.