Summer love
for the young-
at-heart

In romance these days, love may be exciting and new, but the lovers are every age -- from the young to the young-at-heart.

In fact, it's fiction

Kathleen Eagle began writing series romances but more recently has moved to hardcover fiction. A writer's writer, Eagle's distinctive voice resonates with the honesty of an author who lives in the world about which she writes.

Sandy Huseby: You're noted for your multicultural romances -- the do-gooder white woman and the Indian outsider. What draws you to that recurring theme?
Kathleen Eagle: At the risk of creating the impression that my books are anything but romantic fiction -- fiction, I say -- I confess to having a particular affinity for that "do-gooder white woman." I prefer to describe her as a white woman sojourning in Indian Country. As a college student convinced that we Boomers could save the world, I went to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota for a summer volunteer project and met the man I would eventually marry. Now, Clyde had no idea that he was in need of being saved or even tamed. But he's flexible and amazingly tolerant. His Lakota family took me under the Eagle wing, permitted me to teach in their school -- a gratifying 17-year career -- and pretty much made a human being of me. But mind you, I write fiction.

SH: The Night Remembers, now out in paperback and a finalist for the prestigious RITA Award, is set within the urban Indian worod. How much of your family's life experience informs such a story?
KE: We moved to Minnesota when Clyde was recruited to teach in urban "Indian Country," a challenging job in the inner city. But kids are kids. In The Night Remembers a homeless boy rescues that "do-gooder" white woman (who happens to be on the run) with help from his mysterious hero, a man who lives a double life on the city streets and below them. Our older son also works at Clyde's school. Both of our boys, with their penchant for creating comic book heroes, helped me create young Tommy T. Jess Brown Wolf, the hero, who is part Old Man Coyote, part Beast, part Phantom, all irresistible man.

SH: Your newest novel is pure cowboy, as real and gritty as the landscape itself. Will you ever run out of cowboy and Indian stories?
KE: Okay, backtracking a little, Clyde was a cowboy before he became a teacher. I know that sounds a little too convenient, but it's true. With his background and my quixotic bent, more cowboys and Indians are a good possibility, since these are the people I love. But mind you, I do write fiction.

REVIEWS BY SANDY HUSEBY

Taming wild horses lures K.C. Houston to the challenge of a different sort of taming in The Last True Cowboy by Kathleen Eagle. K.C. meets Julia Weslin at her family's High Horse ranch, where together they work to protect an endangered herd. The horses need a gentle touch, but no more so than Julia herself and a group of troubled boys she's determined to save. K.C. must decide whether he, too, is meant to run free or yield to the power of love.

Kathleen Eagle is in top form in The Last True Cowboy, bringing to her writing a combination of powerful imagery and cut-to-the-marrow emotional impact.


Love on the rocks -- and in the woods

Some of the best writing is to be found in series books. A case in point is Pamela Bauer's Babe in the Woods.

When Danielle Taylor inherits a rustic Minnesota resort from the birth grandfather she never knew, she decides to seek out her heritage and her own identity. Brendan Millar comes to the resort as a seeker, too. A seminarian, he's on the brink of making a final commitment to the priesthood, but Danielle reminds him of everything he'd be leaving behind.

When Brendan's teenage niece, Jodie, comes to the resort, she brings new complications. Jodie is pregnant but totally unsettled about her future, questioning whether or not to give up her child for adoption.

Pamela Bauer's interweaving of sensitive family issues is enhanced by her heartwarming empathy for very real people searching out answers. Babe in the Woods is tender, loving, and ennobling reading.


Friends and lovers

The complex challenges of relationships become even more so when lifelong friends discover long-kept secrets in Between Friends by Sandra Kitt.

Two women -- one black, one white -- are drawn to the same man. Dallas Oliver sees in Alex Marco the chance to reconcile with her painful past. Her friend, Valerie, sees the stability of a father figure for her daughter Megan, as well as something more. For Dallas, there's the added turmoil of reconciling her own white and black heritages in a world in which there are degrees of color.

Sandra Kitt brings candor and compassion to this vivid exploration of her characters' lives.


A rising star in love's firmament

After the Civil War, the West of Colorado Territory is an untamed land, where a woman must rely on her own wit and resiliency to realize her dreams. Until she meets her match, that is, as Marjorie Bascom does in Lucky Stars by debut author Patricia Roy. That meeting enables Marjorie to maneuver Leon McCoy into marriage so that she can claim the land she loves for her own. Strangers when they marry, Leon and Marjorie learn they've each lucked into something special. But is luck enough to hold a marriage together when neither partner is sure of the other?

Patricia Roy's debut sparkles with folksy charm and warmth that cheer like a certain lucky star blazing across the horizon. A writer to watch ascend.


Sandy Huseby writes and reviews from her homes in Fargo, North Dakota, and Nevis, Minnesota. She is online at SHuseby@aol.com.

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