The Big Sugar (A Brigid Reardon Mystery)
What is a “big sugar”? In Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1881, it’s a cattle baron—someone with enormous power and money, and control of a chunk of the community, human and economic. Despite her best intentions to just locate her runaway brother and settle down, even if that means living in a dirt-floored “soddy” house within view of the Rocky Mountains, Irish immigrant Brigid Reardon can’t help fighting for what’s right. On a recent ride out on the range, she’s found a young woman murdered, lynched: her friend Ella. Frontier justice? Or a warning to those who push back?
Brigid’s efforts to find out what happened to Ella alternate with applying her father’s horse-whisperer techniques to a wild mustang, gaining a riding horse in the process. She’s also struggling to sort out her feelings for her traveling companion, Padraic—scraps recalled from the earlier book in this series, The Streel, suggest she and Padraic have been forming a bond for a while, and only the uncertainties around her brother have slowed the couple from firming up their engagement.
But figuring out how a cattle baron can ignore the social and legal restraints and seize what he wants may also upend Brigid’s plans for a good life among other Irish immigrants. A final author’s note explains the roots of this brief novel in real records of lynchings out West, so that Logue’s story shines fact-based light on a messy area of settler history. Strong character interactions in The Big Sugar add to its interest; sadly, it seems to end far too soon.
