Review: More Margaret Tanner Gold
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 21, 2013
Thomasina Victoria Lindsay is a beautiful headstrong young woman. In 1879, having lost her English Manor house to creditors on the death of her father, she arrives at her uncle's farm in north-eastern Victoria with her two brothers. Her uncle has died during their voyage from England and one brother is still recovering from wounds received during Lord Chelmsford's disastrous Zulu campaign. Worse is still to come when she encounters the enmity of a powerful local land owner, Adam Munro. Sparks fly between the pair as they fight their way towards their inevitable accommodation.I enjoyed Frontier Belle. Margaret Tanner knows, and obviously loves, the region of Victoria she writes about. Her historical research is good and her characters suit the story, which has sufficient twists and turns to sustain the reader's interest. The shifts in points of view during confrontations are less structured than they could be, but I had no doubts as to whose head I was in at any time.As a fellow Australian, I sometimes blinked at the substitution of American terms, such as "rancher" and "sod-buster" for those I was more used to, but there was no easy way within the story to introduce the Australian equivalents. Our larger land owners and small settlers obtained their land in very similar ways to their American counterparts, at roughly equivalent dates so this is merely a personal quibble and doesn't detract from the story.I would happily read other books by this author and recommend Frontier Belle to those who enjoy historical romance.