Guest Review: Beneath The Texas Sky by Jodi Thomas

This is one of those wonderful family sagas that begins with two isolated individuals who meet and together they write a history that i s fascinating and a testimony to the survival of love in some very difficult times.   Bethanie is alone, and to be alone in 19th century Texas just after the Civil War is nearly to be helpless and hopeless.   For Bethanie it also meant that she was at the beck and call of an aunt and uncle who were heartless and cruel, who used and abused her while insulting her mother as a whore and Bethanie  as just like her.   Josh Weston, an undercover Texas Ranger was her only hope and, as it turned out, Bethanie was to be critical in saving Josh’s life as well as a young boy who was traveling with them named Dusty Barfield.    Josh and Bethanie traveled to the Weston family ranch and only a week after arriving, Bethanie’s life takes an unexpected turn that rips her and Josh apart for the foreseeable future.  

This is no doubt a love story, but there is mystery and adventure mixed in as well.  These were tough times after the Civil War and rustling and get-rich-schemes abounded.  There are bad guys galore and sometimes it is difficult to tell the baddies from the good ones.  But this story is also about survival–managing to live through unexpected Indian raids, surviving the rigors of drought and harsh winters, trying to endure when unscrupulous ranchers are plotting to kill or run off their neighbors, and the especially difficult life most women had to endure.  Women who were alone like Bethanie were especially vulnerable, and her major worry was staying away from her uncle who sought to rape her on several occasions.

This is also one of those wonderful novels that spans several decades and keeps the reader engaged as the lives of these stalwart and plucky individuals unfolds.  It is a story of the enduring quality of love that seems to be curtailed at every turn, that must weather the unexpected circumstances caused by greed and calamity.  It is a novel that embraces the reality of the 19th century Old West, making no excuses for it, and weaving the reality of history throughout these fictional lives.  Ms Thomas has written a book that is full of authentic characters who never seem improbably, who always keep the reader’s interest, and whose lives wax and wane according to the times and the stress of history.  

While I really can’t call this novel an epic in the truest sense, nevertheless there is that feel about it.  One gets the impression that the Westons are putting down roots that will endure, no matter the hardship or the attacks of nature or unprincipled people.  Bethanie is a woman who manages in spite of the worst life can throw at her, and her plucky spirit seems to have infected all whose lives intersects with hers.  The men in her life are strong and steady, men of honor and ethics, both of whom are willing to lay down their lives for her and their children.  And as in all good novels, those ethics and the honor that guides their existence is challenged in ways that, if they fail, will mean the end of this wonderful family.

So I hope that historical romance fans will read this story.  It is a re-issue of an older work that was first published in 1988, and it is my hope that those who missed it the first time around will make an effort to read this time.   Jodi Thomas is well-known and her books are favorites among Western romance fiction readers.  The story flows beautifully and I had the feeling that I had met these people somewhere.  And while they are fictional and lived in a time far distant, one can easily believe that they are alive and waiting to converse across the back fence.  It is a fine effort and I, for one, am delighted that the publishers are bringing this book “out of mothballs.”

I give it a rating of 4.5 out of 5.