Rosie’s review of Open Country
How do you forgive a brother’s betrayal? How far do you go to protect the family you love? Hank and Molly find out in OPEN COUNTRY, Book II of the 1870s family saga, the Blood Rose Trilogy.
Molly McFarlane is as desperate as a woman can get. Forced to flee with her late sister’s children, she must provide for her wards while outrunning the relentless tracker the children’s vicious stepfather has set on their trail. Out of money and with no other options, she marries a man badly injured in a train derailment, assuming when he dies, the railroad settlement will provide the money they need to keep moving West.
But there is one small problem. The man doesn’t die.
Hank Wilkins doesn’t recall the accident he barely survived-and he certainly doesn’t remember marrying Molly. But as he slowly recovers at the Wilkins ranch in New Mexico Territory, the idea of a real marriage takes hold…until his memory returns, and that fragile trust is shattered, and the tracker follows Molly to the ranch. Then things really start to unravel.
As anyone who read the first of Ms. Warner’s Blood Trilogy, PIECES OF SKY, knows, the Blood Rose trilogy follows the lives, loves and struggles of three brothers and the ranch they’ve worked and struggled to see successful.
In this the second installment, we have middle brother Hank Wilkins and Molly McFarlane’s story.
Molly idolized her father who was something of a medical legend. Molly follows him faithfully for years in his practice assisting him even when she can barely tolerate to witness the human suffering she’s exposed to day after day. Blithely assuming her compliance her father brings Molly with him to treat the wounded of the Civil War, a circumstance that has left her bereft and devastated, doubly so after her father’s death. Not knowing what else to do Molly continues nursing until she receives word that her sister is ill.
After a hasty second marriage in a valiant attempt to secure their future, her sister realizes her husband is not the man she thought him to be. Arriving at her sister’s death bed, Molly agrees to take her sisters two children and flee.
With some vague idea to go to San Francisco, Molly and the children are involved in a horrible train wreck that has Molly claiming to be the unconscious Hank Wilkins fiancée. Realizing the gravity of Hank’s injuries and learning of the railroad’s decision to pay an insurance installment to the wives of the men injured or killed in the railroad accident, desperate for the money to help her escape her dangerous and cruel brother-in-law, Molly marries the injured and unconscious Hank.
And that’s just the beginning of the story…
The characters are fairly well drawn which is very important in a trilogy. There is a very strong ensemble cast of characters. Characters from the first book reappear in OPEN COUNTRY. I’m always sensitive about people and dialogue being interchangeable. Hank and Brady, the oldest of the brothers from the first book, are clearly drawn as are the women they choose. I very much enjoyed the continuity of the story and its connectedness to the first one. OPEN COUNTRY stands well on its own.
There was some unevenness in the plot and at times I felt it was stretched a bit thin. While Ms. Warner favors have strong women, an idea I’m not at all opposed to, I was very disappointed in her succumbing to the temptation and leading Molly to a TSTL moment. It just made no sense to me. I’d have given this book a 4.5 rating until then.
Even so, this could not destroy my enjoyment of the reading experience of this book. The vivid descriptions of the ranch in New Mexico are wonderful as are many other elements of the story. I hesitate to say this is an endearing story because I don’t particularly like to see that word in a review, but the story certainly has those elements. It is definitely a story with passion, but it is the measured and enduring sort.
I’m enjoying the trilogy and I think most lovers of westerns will. I’m looking forward to the third installment, Jack Wilkins story, CHASING THE SUN due out January 2011.
My grade = 4 out of 5
The series:
Read more from Rose at Nobody Asked Me
This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here