The Vengeance Road series, Book 1 Erin Bowman Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Fiction, YA Western Themes: Country Tales, Girl Power, Thieves ****+
Description
Kate Thompson just turned eighteen a short time ago - and she grows up fast, the moment she rides home to find the house in flames and her beloved Pa hanging from
the mesquite tree over Ma's grave. She doesn't know why the Rose Riders, notorious gang headed by Waylan Rose, rode all the way from their usual stomping grounds to
Prescott to target her family, but it doesn't matter: she won't rest until each and every one of them's as dead as the father she buried. As she rides across Arizona
Territory in pursuit, she inadvertently picks up the Colton brothers, Will and Jesse, who prove impossible to shake... especially when there may be gold involved, a
lost mine deep in the Superstition Mountains and in the very heart of Apache territory. Kate couldn't care less about any gold, not while her father's killer still
walks and talks, but much blood has already been spilled over this claim - and hers may be next.
Review
This is a fast-riding Western adventure in the vein of True Grit, with flying bullets and lost fortunes and twists and turns aplenty. A frontier girl, Kate
grew up strong and keen, setting out on her quest without quite caring if she ever makes it back alive. Along the way, she's forced to confront more about herself than she
wanted to know, learning just how much she really has to learn, but she keeps her spine and her fire through most of the tale. She's not a perfect heroine, letting the
ends justify the means more than once... but nobody in this book is perfect, and everyone ends up using someone for their own goals at some point - sometimes with tragic
consequences. This is not a watered-down young adult love-on-the-range tale, either; though there are some sparks of romance, they're firmly kept in the background for
most of the book, and even when they try to move to the forefront, there are many complications. The characters are solid residents of their era, with the attendant
attitudes and prejudices: all the whites look askance at the Apaches, who in turn rarely speak less than ill of the whites, with little more than grudging tolerance ever
managed. They also smoke, drink, and make casual reference to prostitutes. It was a hard time that produced hard people, but they were still human, still trying to do
right by themselves and, when possible, those they love... even if they failed at least as often as not. With hardly ever a dull moment or sour note, not to mention its
unflinching willingness to take its characters to some very harsh places, both physically and emotionally, I highly enjoyed this Old West romp.
The Vengeance Road series, Book 2 Erin Bowman Clarion Books Fiction, YA Western Themes: Country Tales, Girl Power, Thieves ****
Description
The frontier public knows him as the Rose Kid, a cold-blooded boy who, at only fifteen, slaughtered an entire family of farmers and ran off to join
up with the notorious Rose Riders. But they have it all wrong: Reece was about to be slaughtered, too, until the leader of the Riders, Luther Rose,
decided he'd be more useful alive than dead. Reece had on him a distinctive gold coin, one very much like the kind carried by the gunslinger who killed
Luther's half-brother ten years back, and the boy insists he could identify the man who gave it to him. A day hasn't gone by that Reece hasn't hated
himself for what he's had to do to stay alive, that he hasn't dreamed of escape, but the one time he did try sneaking away they made him pay dearly.
Which is how he wound up on the train to Prescott with the other Riders, stealing a lucrative payroll and robbing the passengers while they're at
it... and how he nearly got shot by a young woman.
Charlotte knows she should've stayed behind in Yuma, like her mother told her. Only one week ago, her beloved father died after a long illness, willing
the family fortune to his wife and daughter... and bringing trouble from a devious uncle who wants those riches for himself. Mother went to Prescott to
sort things out with the lawyer, but Charlotte isn't about to be pushed aside like a little girl. Besides, she aspires to follow in the footsteps of
pioneering lady reporter Nellie Bly, and how is she going to find anything worth reporting on if she sits meekly in her room? She didn't count on her
train being held up, but fortunately she had her father's Colt on her when it was... and she kept her cool enough to be able to describe the robbers
when she came to the next town. As if anyone west of Colorado wouldn't know the Rose Riders - or the face of the notorious killer, the Rose Kid, when
he's staring right at her.
Bad luck lands Charlotte and Reece together, one as he flees from both the law and his former crewmates, the other as a hostage of circumstance. Though
they start as rivals, they soon find their goals unexpectedly aligning - but can that bond last against scheming relatives, relentless outlaws,
complicated histories, and flying bullets?
Review
This "companion novel" takes place ten years after Bowman's top-notch Western adventure Vengeance Road, and crosses over with a couple of
the characters from that book, but more or less stands on its own.
Arizona has changed substantially in that decade, most notably with the arrival of the railroad and the prosperity (and problems) that brings. The
characters are also their own people, and not rehashes of the ones in the first story. Charlotte is nothing like the tough, vengeance-driven Kate (teen
protagonist of the first book, now a young married woman and soon-to-be mother), being a daughter of privilege and less country-wise (and people-wise;
she takes the printed word of news articles as gospel, as well as the notion that people tend to be either Good or Bad and that's all there is to it).
Still, she's no fainting flower, and pursues her dreams despite the naysayers who insist that journalism is an improper and impractical pursuit for a
woman. Reece, on the other hand, was dealt a bad hand in life, first from a drunkard father, and then when the farm family he was boarding with was
struck by the Rose Riders, and yet again when Luther not only took him as an essential hostage to point the way to the gunslinger, but seems intent on
turning him into a true outlaw and Rose Rider, taking on a paternal role that Reece can't help responding to. From their first meeting aboard the train,
Reece and Charlotte's association is bound to be rocky, and it doesn't notably improve for some time later. Meanwhile, Charlotte discovers just what
lengths her crooked uncle has gone to in order to ensure her father's will is disregarded and the family fortune willed to herself and her mother
instead go to him... an inheritance to be sealed by a forced marriage, either of her mother to the uncle or herself to her uncle's son. Worse, the very
people Charlotte and her mother were counting on to protect them and enforce the will seem to have been paid off or persuaded by the man's unfounded
slander against them. Reece finds himself pursuing the gunslinger alone, knowing that he will never be free of Luther Rose until he delivers the
outlaw's brother's killer to the Rose Riders, but instead finds himself pulled into a story of lost gold and vengeance sought and found a decade earlier
when the trail leads to the homestead of Kate Colton, nee Thompson. Kate has ridden the road Charlotte and Reece are on now, a road of vengeance and
justification of all means to their desired ends, and knows where it leads - to rash actions you can never undo, consequences you cannot control, and a
dark cloud of regret that you can never outrun but only learn to live with. Of course, the youngsters don't really understand, not even Reece with his
hard and compromised life, until it's too late and they have their own dark clouds.
As in the first book, everyone has extra sides to them, even the baddies, and nobody is beyond mistakes, nor does anyone get through the book without
some blood on their hands. For some reason, I found it a little weaker than the first story; Kate was just such a strong character in her own book that
her arrival threatens to swamp Reece and Charlotte, and neither of the new characters really grabbed me the way the ones did in Vengeance Road.
Still, it's a well-paced, active novel with few slow spots, quite enjoyable on the whole.
