To the Ends of the Earth

A rewrite of The Danvers Touch

Cat Cochran is a photographer struggling to make ends meet. She is hired to photograph Travis Danvers and his ship the Wind Warrior.

This was an amazing book. I absolutely loved it. There's lots of angst but Cat is a strong heroine and Travis finishes the story beautifully.

Cat was born into a rich family and married an even richer man, Billy Nelson, when she was 19, just after her father died. Billy turns out to be truly awful, to the point that Cat eventually ends ups diving naked off his ship and swimming into the ocean for over two miles in the middle of the night to escape being raped by him and his friends. She decides that rich men aren't capable of loving anything but themselves.

Travis is rich. He married Tina when he was 20. She deliberately got pregnant to catch him, then had an abortion two weeks after their wedding and told him she had a miscarriage. Travis decided that he would never trust a woman with less money than himself. Since then he has only had "relationships" with women that he can buy.

So we have this conundrum. Cat hates rich men, and Travis is rich. Travis only wants women he can buy, and Cat won't be bought. Their passion finally overcomes both their reserves, and they enter into an uneasy relationship. Cat works herself to the bone trying to earn enough money to support her family. Now this was the part I found somewhat questionable. Since her father died, her family hasn't had any money and she has been supporting them. Her mother is completely clueless as to finances, and still lives like she is rich. She is actually engaged to a marry a rich man in a couple months, and has just spent a small fortune on her trousseau (funded by Cat). Furthermore, Cat's twin siblings are in medical school and she needs to pay their fees too. On one hand, I understand Cat needing to support her family and not wanting to burden her mother, but it gets somewhat ridiculous towards the end. Why did she let her mother have the money for frivolous things like her trousseau when she is so desperate for money that she can't even afford to go to hospital when her doctor tells her to? As for Travis, I don't think his background story is severe enough to excuse his absolute distrust and hatred of women and the brutally cruel way he ends up treating Cat when he thinks she has lied to him. Still, for all these faults, this was a brilliant story with no cheese at all. Yes, Cat and Travis end up together but not without a lot of pain first. Their happily ever after is well earned and I shed a lot of tears along the way.