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O’ROURKE’S
BRIDE
ISBN
978-0821780558
Zebra
Barbara Dan
Barbara Dan has
written an interesting story about cultures clashing: western
culture vs. eastern culture vs. British culture, all set in the
bawdy, boisterous and booming times of Virginia City, 1864.
Kate McGillacutty is a pampered rich heiress who has been kept away from
the crudeness of Virginia City by her mother. But her father has
summoned both his estranged wife and his daughter home because he’s
fed up with their pursuit of all things expensive and has decided
the cure is marrying his daughter off to a man that can handle his
spoiled daughter and give him grandchildren. She resists the
arrangement her father has in mind and schemes about how to
seemingly obey her father and gain her freedom. She tricks her
father into agreeing that she will marry the first man she sees,
planning all along to buy the man off. The first person she sees is
Peter O’Rourke—a handsome second son of an aristocratic English Lord
who is making his way, after being disinherited, as an actor,
neither fact being known to the McGillacuttys.
Down on
his luck, he reluctantly agrees to marry Kate, playing both her
father and Kate to his advantage. Kate gets a rude surprise when he
actually takes her up to a logging camp to learn what hard work and
real life is all about per her father’s wishes. Unwilling to show
weakness, Kate jumps into logging camp life and makes herself
useful. What she doesn’t bargain on is the desire that flairs up
between her and her husband, despite her fury over his trickery.
Both Kate and her father have underestimated Peter O’Rourke as he
gets the father to set him up as a lumber baron and Kate to finally
become a willing wife.
There’s a good deal of passion and wit in
this book. Though it may suffer from too many descriptive passages,
they don’t take away from the fun of this novel. |
