Some more action and romance in the Wild West:
Blurb:
After protesting abuses at the Montana Indian Boarding School, Essie is dismissed from her teaching job there. But before she can depart, she's kidnapped by Cade Newcastle—the half-breed uncle of her missing student.
Shot during the escape and now dogged by a hanging posse, Cade's desperate search becomes a race against time, and Essie—instead of abandoning him—saves his life.
Trading favor for favor, Cade and Essie continue searching for Cade's nephew. The lines between captor and captive blur into mutual respect, then flare into passion. But the hanging posse will never allow the half-breed to be the ruination of Essie Sparks.
Alright, I admit to
still loving the Wild West even though the days, when I knew the
(slightly less romantic) Leatherstocking Tales
and the (even more romantic) Little house on the prairie
by heart, are long since gone. Okay, The ruination of Essie
Sparks is still very
romantic but one of the things that I like about the Barbara Ankrum
and her books, is the fact that despite the fast that there is a lot
of romance in them and I always fear for the protagonists and hope
for their HEA and so on – depsite all that, she never cuts out the
harsh realities of that time. Be it something like indenture, the
lack of female rights or as in this book the way the native americans
and their children were treated by the whites, she always makes
abundantly clear how hard and most often rather hopeless people's
lives were without making the book too depressing.
Her
protagonists get nothing for free, their happiness wasn't handed to
them on a plate, they must really work for it. More often than not
they must change their spots,
trust in others and above all they must dare to trust their
potential partner.
I
love Essie Sparks, she is an amazing character. Despite everything
she has gone through herself, even though her own situation looks
rather hopeless as well, she does everything she can to help others
in need – even at the risk
that it turns against her. When Cade, a halfblood and also the uncle
of one of her indian students, kidnaps her, she must learn to work
with him in order to find her missing student.
As
is right and proper for such a book there're the fireworks
first and then some completely different sparks fly.... Slowly but
steadily Essie and Cade realise that they have more in common than
just the search for Daniel or „LittleWolf“.
When
Cade gets arrested for abduction and murder, it's all Essie can do to
try to prevent the lynch mob from killing him....
The ruination
of Essie Sparks is a book I
really enjoyed and that captured me with its pleasing but
intense writing style. There is not just black and white but complex
characters, complex problems and there're people and characters that
as a reader you take into your heart and woth whom you feel.
This
wasn't the first and definitely not the last book by Barbara Ankrum
that I've read and I'm also sure that this wasn't the last time that
I've gone to search for Little Wolf
with Cade and Essie.
*I
received this book from ebook Discovery in exchange for an honest
review*
★★★★
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