The story is set in Arizona and Montana, with a stop in Idaho.  We weave through uncharted territory with Monica, our protagonist, as she is on the defensive most of the time.  Feeling misunderstood and isolated, Monica is unknowingly on a spiritual quest to find her past by freeing herself from her medical school life.  The dreams she though she shared with her sister.  Monica seeks adventure to heal herself and tries desperately to not be wrongly targeted along the way.

Drecksel has a book that is richly detailed in description, characters and settings, and has fine-tuned each page for the most discriminating reader.  I thoroughly enjoyed this journey into the life of Monica and living vicariously through her because the heart of the story is about a young woman coming of age.  She begins to find her self-esteem with new friends, especially a young boy she did not expect to love.  The true rescue was in the hands of the woman who hired her.

We share Monica’s search for her identity.  The story goes further.  There’s an intriguing section of cat-and-mouse with a man she wants but is afraid to love.  As the cracks in her life start appearing from her past, she cowers.  Will she be brave?  You must read on to find out.

Drecksel shares in this book the world she knows of the law and what she learned about medicine.  She takes us into the world of quantum physics, something most know little about. 

The author’s heart and soul shows in these pages as she takes us through the growth years of a young woman who is grieving parents she never knew due to their untimely accidental death.  She unwittingly abandons the only family she really has – her sister.  Their mentally ill brother comes back into their lives to add to the intrigue.   Our protagonist’s world is suspended, or so it appears, as she works dead-end jobs and circles around failed relationships. Feeling like a wanderer, naïve and misguided, she is apparently lost most of the time.

Even with all the trials and tribulations in the book, Drecksel was not afraid to tackle the topic of string theory and quantum physics and weave it into the bedroom conversations with the man our protagonist falls in love with in the most unlikely place.  Will she spin this adventure into a series?  Why not?  Three is a lucky number in mysticism and there is some of the mystical found in this romantic adventure too.

Drecksel’s story exemplifies the unglamorous truth about writing fiction.  It is hard work and time consuming to get it right, make it a page turner and have the reader talk about it after they are finished.  Debra paid her debt by being diligent in her revisions and research of science and the environment.  The native habitats of the west and how she shows us these in adventurous settings many-times-over makes it a great read.

 I give this book two thumbs up and a four-star rating.  It held my attention and I finished it in a couple of days.  That is saying something for a person who does not read fiction.  But since I have lived in Arizona for 35 years and share a few of the rafting stories told in the book, I was enthralled.  Thank you Debra Drecksel for a fine book and I look forward to number two in your series.

Debra Drecksel lived the life of the creative writer’s dream.  First she hedged her bets with law school and a career in law, but eventually followed her passion for writing novels and has never looked back.  Her book begs the question, “Have you ever felt like you really didn’t fit in and considered risking everything to find a better fit?”

Drecksel’s debut novel “Hidden Dimensions”, self-published by IUniverse, is available at Mystic Moon Bookstore in north Scottsdale, Arizona and on Debra’s website www.hiddendimentionsnovel.com   Drecksel will be presenting a workshop with her book on the 16^th of November, 2010 at 6:30 p.m.  For details contact www.mysticmoonbookstore.com

Patricia L. Brooks, author, www.plbrooks.com

President/founder, Scottsdale Society of women Writers

www.brooksgoldmannpublishing.com