The Mountains Between Us
Oregon, 1847. Grace Randolph and her husband, James, trek through winter cold, seeking shelter with Grace’s brother, Zachary. Zachary and his family make the couple welcome, even if they do have to sleep on travelling bed-rolls in the cramped log cabin. But James, a former soldier, can’t settle to the farming way of life. He sees a newspaper article about gold in California and leads Grace south to go prospecting. In California, their adventures begin. James has a secret, and it hangs between the couple, threatening to drive them apart. Why did he leave the army?
This book is a sequel to To the Wild Horizon, the story of how Grace and James met and married. Although it can be read alone, I felt that the first part was slow, following on from the first book, with characters who did not continue into Grace and James’ new adventures. However, once they arrived in California, pace and excitement picked up. The story is primarily a romance, wrapped around a Wild West adventure.
It would be a spoiler to detail all their adventures. But the imagery took me right back to TV westerns of my childhood. There were ’49-ers panning for gold, well-dressed ‘gentleman’ criminals, Mexicans in colourful blankets, furniture-breaking bar room brawls, Chinese people making a living from laundry, whores with hearts of gold, hard-working mothers, and lawless violence that might result in ‘natural’ justice, or might result in racist massacre.
And, more modernly, a gun-totin’ heroine and a hero with progressive morals. Suitable for romance readers who like a feisty heroine matched with a dark brooding man.
