Rocky Mountain Widow
Montana in wintertime automatically makes the setting a cold one, as the saying goes: “there’s nothing between you and the North Pole but barbed wire!” Amid the snowstorms, one really rotten family spoils the frontier for the decent folk of Bluebonnet. Joshua, the bachelor rancher who saves Claire from her vicious husband and then continues to help her, has character nicely balanced between masculine red-blooded and gentlemanly virtues. Claire is also well developed as a sensitive yet determined woman. She never intends to love again, and Joshua thinks women are treacherous. There is a pioneer grandmother, tough as nails, and a freewheeling couple of siblings that round out the family. The rustling, crooked, conniving Hamiltons keep creating circumstances where the two are thrown together. The reader knows what to expect, but the journey is all great fun. For those who care about such details, the likelihood of the wolf attack as described is debatable by the experts on wolf behavior, but otherwise the action is believable. A gentle western.
