PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Paperbacks
PUBLISHING DATE: September 1999
Review:
This book was originally published as A Pocketful Of Paradise in 1997 and was re-release as The Soul Collector as a movie tie-in edition. The movie stars Melissa Gilbert as Rebecca.
Zacariah, is an immortal spirit, and has been a soul collector for thousands of years but he's been getting a little lax in his duties. His job is to collect the souls of a dying humans and usher them into the afterlife. Because he has a problem showing up on time for his "collections" he has changed more than one human life. His superiors are furious with his disregard for human life and have decided to teach him a lesson. Hoping he will learn to respect humans, his punishment is to spend one month on earth as a mortal man and at the end of that time make a collection on time.
Rebecca is determined to save her son's inheritance, the ranch, even though someone has been stealing her horses. When Zack appears in a haze of mist and clouds before her startled eyes, she is bit wary but she agrees to let Zack work on the farm, because he'll work cheap and she really needs the help.
Rebecca struggles to protect herself from this drifter but there is just something irresistible about Zack. When she sees him treating her son with the compassion and attentiveness he craves she becomes all the more determined to protect herself and her son from heartbreak. But an innocent kiss leads to an attraction that Rebecca can't deny and she finds it difficult to resist this man.
Zack is a very original hero and it's fun watching him attempt to function in the human world as he struggles to do everday things and then when he discovers a certain part of his anatomy that he can't seem to control, when he looks at Rebecca. He starts to realize he's falling in love despite himself but he can't give Rebecca the one thing she needs from him; the truth, and he still has that collection to make before he can return to heaven . . . Torn between hurting the people he's grown to love and further upsetting his superiors Zack must make the ultimate sacrifice.
This is a very heartwarming book and I'd recommend it for a nice uplifting read.
