Review: A true Western romance
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 25, 2013
In a book that intelligently tackles racial tensions of post-Civil War era, Merry Farmer has penned a highly engaging romance between two fiery-spirited individuals who, in spite of their temperament and position, came to need each other in their lives.Living in Montana, still a relatively rugged land in the late 1800s, Lily Singer was that odd ball of a person. Taken from her bride at a young age, her upbringing at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School ensured that she would be brought up as a white person. But she is also Singing Bird to the Indians, whose culture she tries at first to reject, as it would allow her an easier life as a schoolteacher. For Lily though, she has always been a lost soul, at once belonging to either ethnicity yet separate from both. Her sole comfort in life is to teach, but when prejudice among the town's influential wants to ban Indian children from going to school, claiming they were savages, Lily's indignation caused her to rise up to the challenge and wager that the Indian children are just as smart as white children. However, distraction is abound as Lily has to not only coach her team of ethnically mixed students to win at the Academic Games, clear the names of innocent Indians who had been accused theft and robber, and avoid succumbing to the seduction of handsome Christian Avery, whose very job puts her reputation at risk.Christian Avery fell first in lust, then in love, with Lily. A member of the prestigious Baltimore Averys, he came out to the wilds of Montana on his own to be a lawman. His responsibility is vast, duties immense, which just means he has no time to be distracted by a schoolteacher who's bent on challenging his law. The problem? He likes her a bit more each time he sees her. To him, Lily is his spirited virago whose sense of equality and justice matches his own; to some of the other townspeople, Lily is an Indian who is not fit to be a teacher. Even as he tries to hunt down the real miscreants that are stirring up the town, his true obstacle was in convincing Lily the truth of his affections, and to take a chance with him. In a way, this book can be alternatively titled Christian's Seduction, and it takes Lily a long time to succumb.The relationship between Lily and Christian is truly a battle of wills. Both are fierce, stubborn, and firm on their own beliefs. From the outset, the two were antagonistic. But as they spend more time together, both realize that the other's views are simply their own but from a different perspective. The grudging friendship between them was slow and realistic, eventually building up to passionate love. Together, they sizzled, but apart, they were each very unique. Undoubtedly Lily is the more complex of the two, given her search for cultural identity throughout the book, as well as someone with whom to claim kin. The image of Christian as an unyielding, firm presence is the perfect counterpart for Lily's emotional instability, and he wears the shining armor quite well. Amongst all these, however, the winning point of this book is not its fantastic characters but the abundance of historical details within the story; from the tensions between whites and Indians of the late 1800s, when just some years year white settlers were disputing with Indians over much of the western frontier, to the strict social mores of the Victorian era, it is obvious that Merry Farmer had done her research in writing this book. As a history lover, I highly recommend this book to all fans of historical romance, to learn a bit of the Wild West without the outlaws but with contemporary issues and captivating characters.*Review copy received from the author in exchange for an honest review; "Indian" here is used to mean "Native American/American Indian"