Deborah Smith - Gentle Rain

A Connecticut heiress journeys to a “cracker” cattle ranch in search of her mentally handicapped birth parents. She never expects to find a home, a family and a new purpose in live, or to fall in love with the ranch’s part-Seminole owner, a cowboy struggling to care for his handicapped ranch hands and his Down syndrome brother.
Kara Whittenbrook is an unlikely heiress. Down-to-earth and lovably quirky, she's never fit in with the stogy Whittenbrook clan of Connecticut. Growing up at her parents' rainforest preserve in Brazil, she has a quaintly off-beat view of life. Now her beloved parents have died in a plane crash, and Kara's learned a stunning truth.
She was adopted.
Her birth parents are Mac and Lily Tolbert. They live and work on a backwoods cattle ranch in northern Florida. Ranch owner Ben Thocco is running out of time and money. He's going to need a miracle in order to save the ranch and care for the likable crew of unusual hands he employs, including Kara's parents and his own fragile brother Joey.
Kara, using a fake identity on the advice of her lawyer, gets a job at Ben's ranch in Fountain Springs, Florida, where her adventures include entering an unpredictable mare in a local horse show.

Comment: I'm in love. I'm totally in love with this book. It's one of the most beautiful, sweet and wonderful books ever!
I don't even know how to start praising its beauty.
The book focuses on the problems that people with mental handicapps face because they're different. The "normal" ones don't always wonder what it's like for people with Down Syndrome or with autism or any other mental affliction how they see the world or how hard it is to see the so proclaimed normal ones react to them. Whether by laughing or ignoring or mistreating them, those people not always treat others with respect.
In this book the author presented us all kinds of people and it was beautiful. Think of your favourite song and it's what this book feels like. I'm still...so happy, to tremendously at ease because I read this book.
The title is totally right on, you'll see if you read it.
The characters are amazing. It's a miracle to think there are people like the protagonists in the world. Both Kara and Ben are the most amazing characters, they love with their hert full and they aren't afraid to stand up for what they believe. Karen does things just to ease the others minds, jut to bring them a little bit of happiness and to make them smile...it's beautiful. Ben takes care and welcomes anyone with a mental handicap, he makes them worthy and valuable and offers them a loving home . Seriously, it's great.
They both feel some guilt for past actions and they aren't perfect, they act stupid sometimes, but who doesn't? Nobody is perfect all the time, and in this book, the perfection of their actions is highlighted mainly because they aren't perfect. But they're close, oh they surely are! And they fall in love, slowly, like stepping over a lake, each step at a time...it feels real, more so because it isn't rushed.
I won't spoil anything, I won't tell what happens and why it hapens. You have to read the book. This is amazing, it's beautiful. Try to read it, borrow it, bring it from the library, buy it! Just get it because you'll smile over happiness and sadness but in the end your heart will be full.
Like I said, I'm in love with this book.