No Way Up by Mary Connealy

Mary Connealy has started a new series of novels called The Cimarron Legacy.  Bethany House Publishers sent me a free copy of Book 1 in exchange for an honest review.  No Way Up takes place in New Mexico Territory in the 1880's.  The ranch patriarch Chance Boden is injured in an avalanche.  Not sure if he will survive, he asks his 3 adult children, Cole, Justin and Sadie, to come to the reading of his will.  He is requiring them to live together on The Cimarron Ranch for one year beginning now, or they will all lose their inheritance.  Justin and Cole are constantly bickering, with Sadie in the middle. Justin has working the ranch alone, while Cole has been managing the gold mines on the other side of their land.  Sadie has been volunteering at an orphanage in town, but now has to give it up to live on the ranch too. Heath Kincaid is the cowhand in charge while Chance is injured and looks forward to having Sadie around more, even though her brothers remind him time and again that he is just a cowhand and not fit to court their sister.  When Heath discovers that the avalanche was no accident, and there is a gunman out on top of Skull Mesa hunting down the Boden's, Heath and Sadie must work together to solve the mystery. This is a novel filled with action and cowboy conversation, with the history of the New Mexico Territory thrown in for good measure. Heath and Sadie are involved with some advanced rock climbing and I like that part.  Heath Kincaid is the younger brother of the characters in the Kincaid Brides series of Mary Connealy, so there is a connection to her other books too.  Connealy always has strong women characters and this novel was no different.  I liked how Sadie shared the gospel with one of her enemies even after all the evil he had done.  The story doesn't end with this one novel either; Connealy still leaves some mysteries to be solved in future novels.