A Bad Place to Die (A Tennessee Smith Western)
Life for Tennessee Smith (‘Tennie’) has more than its share of pitfalls. Orphaned at a young age, she manages to escape an attempted abduction and seeks refuge at a church; but the women in the wagon train she joins are not missionaries, as she naively assumes, but mail-order brides headed for Texas. Her husband-to-be seems surprisingly decent, but after a quick marriage ceremony, he introduces her to his three rambunctious young sons and drops dead on their wedding night. Lacking the skills to run a ranch, she allows herself to be pressured into becoming the town marshal in the wild Texas town of Ring Bit. Not that she knows anything about law-keeping, but it does pay a salary. If she survives to collect.
As one might expect in a novel about a law-keeper, there are a number of mysteries: who is responsible for the spate of cattle rustling? Why does the helpful and attractive Wash Jones keep disappearing? And most crucially, why does the town council want her for the job anyway? There is romance, too, but the focus is upon Tennie herself and her struggles to cope with the day-to-day challenges of caring for the boys, dealing with drunken prisoners, and enduring the scorn of the upright citizens. Jackson resists the temptation to turn her into a female gun-slinger who can face down villains. In fact, she prides herself on her cooking, and she certainly deserves a medal for cleaning up after prisoners and enduring their angry profanity. Despite her inexperience, she takes her responsibilities seriously and makes the best of the situations in which she unexpectedly finds herself. The account does grow repetitive, but readers looking for a glimpse of life in the raw Texas frontier in the 19th century will find much to appreciate.
