Her Perfect Life

by Vicki Hinze

Book Overview

Her Perfect Life by Vicki Hinze released on Apr 11, 2006 is available now for purchase.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0373836929
• ISBN13: 9780373836925
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Harlequin Signature Spotlight
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.2" x 6.6"

Customer Reviews

BEST MAINSTREAM NOMINEE

Vicki Hinze's HER PERFECT LIFE well-deserves the RITA nominee as Best Mainstream from Romance Writers of America. The RITA is RWA's version of the Oscar. Hinze's writing is top notch and the story meets and transcends genre expectations while fulfilling even larger goals.

Her Perfect Life

Shot down flying a mission over Iraq, Captain Katie Slater has been a prisoner of war for six years. Suffering abuse at the hands of her captors in silence, the only thing that has kept Katie sane is her need to see her husband and children again. Katie lies in her cell at night mourning the death of her copilot and wishing for the day someone will find her in her desert hell and she can once again be free. Katie's wish comes true days later when she is liberated. Back in Florida, Katie is one unhappy captain. Something is wrong and no one will tell her what it is. Demanding answers and refusing to cooperate with her doctor, Katie wants to see her husband and her children and she wants to see them now. Katie's doctor finally relents and Katie is allowed to see her husband Sam after six long years. The reception Katie was expecting from Sam doesn't happen. When Sam comes clean about his life and their children, Katie has to be sedated. C. D. Quade, Katie's copilot, can't believe the love of his life is alive! Filled with joy but tremendous guilt for all she suffered in the last six years, C. D. demands to see her. What he finds is a shell of the woman he has loved through life and death. Vowing that he will not leave Katie, C. D. sets out to prove to her just how much she is loved. Katie has to fight her way back to normalcy. Refusing to talk about her time in captivity, she is unable to come to grips with her abuse and let it go. With C. D. by her side and her children slowly learning to love her again, Katie has a fight on her hands--a fight she will not let her now dead captors win. Her Perfect Life by Vicki Hinze absolutely tore my heart out. I can't imagine being in Katie's shoes and the fact the story is so realistic made Her Perfect Life dearer to me. I wanted to choke her husband Sam but then couldn't fault him for decisions he made. As much as I couldn't stand Sam, I loved C. D. Patient, kind, and extremely supportive, I thought him the perfect love for Katie. As for Katie, if she were a real person, I would honor her bravery and service. Her character was that well written. Her Perfect Life was emotional, romantic, and just an all around poignant read. It made me angry, laugh, cry, and then smile for a job well done. I feel Ms. Hinze honors the bravest of the brave with Her Perfect Life and I am proud to have read it. Talia Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

A Significant Tribute to Women Prisoners of War in Modern Times

Only Vicki Hinze could write such an insightful, passionate, human drama and still call it romantic suspense. Yet, if Danielle Steel had written this moving story, there would be an immediate clamor to adapt it for television, especially since it is about a woman air force pilot shot down over Iraq in the Gulf War. This novel should be on screen. It delves into the depths of a woman, who, by virtue of being a combat pilot, makes her a different breed from other heroines. Few authors explore what drives a woman to fly in male-dominated skies. Is it competition? Is it arrogance? To fly today's fighter jets she has to be precise, smart and have calculating nerve under stress, the same as any top gun. Robert Gandt, a former top gun himself, writes military thrillers and depicts two kinds of women combat pilots in his stories: those who use their gender to make a political statement--they have ambition but they are actually unsuitable to fly--and those who are born with flying in their blood. He recognizes there is no sexual difference between real "flyers." There is only their desire to soar and to feel the spiritual freedom birds experience. A born flyer is a very independent being. To be in a military environment would seem to be an oxymoron for such independent souls, but for all of their apparent daring and brash nerve, genuine pilots are very grounded people. They have an innate discipline and spiritual awareness of "being at one" with their aircraft, its flight/ground crew and, at times, with the supreme maker of the Universe. Understanding this is what makes Vicki Hinze's heroine, Captain Katie Cole Slater, a fascinating study. Her will to survive through torture and rape--endless days, months, years of captivity--stems as much from the natural courage of being a woman, who is a wife and mother, as it does from her innate drive to become a pilot. Her mantra--"That which is endured is conquered"--builds momentum through the novel as she gains remarkable wisdom and strength during her journey into hell as a prisoner of war and through smashed dreams when she returns. She rises above the expected bitterness that many in her shoes would feel, and she does it in a most credible way--through the interior dialogue the character shares with the author's readers. I dare say the reason Katie triumphs over such devastating blows may be because she is a woman and not a man. She benefits from a woman's nurturing nature. Nevertheless, Katie's psychological resolution is in sharp contrast to the experience of nurses returning from Viet Nam as depicted in the TV series, "China Beach," where the lead character became an alcoholic when she couldn't reconcile her life at war with her life in peacetime. Katie triumphs. She finds love; she reclaims her two children without disrupting or separating them from everyone they love; and she channels the sense of achievement she gained from flying into a different passion designing gardens. She has a whole life; she

tense character study

For six years Air Force pilot Katie Cole Slater has been a prisoner of war held by a warlord in Iraq, but now is free to go home. She survived her ordeal due to her now frayed photos of her husband Sam and their two children Molly and Jake. First the army psychiatrists want to know more about what went wrong. Katie is uncooperative as she is irate that they keep her from her family and that they assume team when she was abandoned and her team was that of one. Her motto now is do not depend on anyone except yourself. However, even home is not what it was when she went on active duty as her spouse Sam has remarried as she was assumed dead. Heartbroken her only connection is her copilot C.D. Quade who she thought died when their plane crashed. Still she is irate with C.D. because he failed her in the desert by leaving her behind. C.D. feels guilty for what happened to Katie, the only woman he loves. He plans to help her readjust though her world has seemingly collapsed in the time she spent as a captive. HER PERFECT LIFE is a tense character study that grips readers from the moment that a justified belligerent Katie comes home and has to deal with the brass, a remarried former husband, and the belief that her pal deserted her. The story line is totally Katie as she adjusts to life in a strange America after six plus years of captivity. The romance between her and C.J. augment a strong look at a former POW trying to regain her equilibrium. Harriet Klausner

An inspiring and unforgettable story

This book is a keeper, one of the best I've read by this author. A woman who's lost six years of her life in captivity returns to have her world turned upside down. Expecting a clich?d TV-movie script, I was delighted to read instead a story about real people struggling with emotions and adjustments. No stereotypes or predictible plot here. I heartily recommend this story about a woman's struggle to re-claim her life.