Just finished Desert Shadows by Betty Webb and was just blown away! I didn't think this book could possibly be better than the last book in her Lena Jones series, but it is. The information on hate groups and how some of the garbage that is printed to pander to those groups was very educational. Not to mention rather scary, my husband is of a different race than I and when we first married over 24 years ago, I thought I saw some rude, nasty behavior but I have noticed that after years of either my not noticing, or it lessening, I am seeing a bit more of that type of rudeness again. All that to say that I think Betty's book is very timely in the subject matter.

And I absolutely loved watching Lena grow as a character. Desert Shadows lets us see more about Lena's past and lets Lena have some more memories of that mysterious past.

Of course, Lena's business partner, Jimmy is back as well as his cousin Owen Sisiwan who is one of the main characters of Desert Shadows. Also Dusty, Lena's on-again off-again boyfriend is back and we are enlightened as to some of his behaviors and they whys of them as well. In addition we get to meed Gloriana Alden-Taylor, the publisher of some of the hate promoting dreck, Gloriana's extended family, Zachary Alden-Taylor, his wife Megan, Gloriana's sisters, and her maid, Rosa.

I don't want to spoil any of the book for anyone, so all I will say is I very much enjoyed the way Betty set some characters up to be very unsympathetic and then turned around and made me feel sorry for them and understand *why* they behaved as they did even though the behaviors were extremely inexcusable.

Thanks, Betty for such a great read!