Tag: historical fiction

About the Book

Briar Logan is a loner who has already survived a wretched childhood, near starvation, and the harsh western frontier in the 1860s. Just when she is on the brink of finally opening her heart to the possibilities of happiness, the love of her life is kidnapped by lawless gold miners–and she steels herself for what could be the greatest loss of her life. Desperate to save her husband and the solitary life they have carved out of the wilderness, Briar is forced to accept the help of a damaged young man and a notorious female horse trainer. Facing whiskey runners, gold thieves, unpredictable elements, and men who will stop at nothing to get what they want, the unlikely trio must forge an uncommon bond in order to survive.

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My Review

Set in 1860s Colorado, A Dangerous Woman From Nowhere’s intriguing opening sees Briar witness her husband’s kidnap by a group of men. It seems Briar and her husband, Porter Logan, have been expecting this eventuality and have done all they can to avoid it and the disruption it will bring to the hard-won peace of their life together. Logan has knowledge and skill that is of value and his kidnappers have riches in their sights and won’t stop at anything to possess it.

Providing hints of just why she is the self-styled ‘dangerous woman from nowhere’, Briar sets out to rescue Logan, armed with an impressive array of weaponry, dogged determination and the survival skills taught her by the people who took her in as a child.

‘Briar didn’t know it then, but she was headed to a place where she would learn to shoot to kill, throw a knife so expertly she could slice a dried apple in half at sixty paces, ride a horse as if they were one, and where she also learned lessons of survival and life…’

Consciously throwing off the woman she has become, Briar channels the inner spirit she calls Mika, identified with the characteristics of the raccoon – intelligent and who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

As Briar sets out on her journey, we gradually learn more about her traumatic childhood, the emotional scars those experiences have caused and the role of Porter Logan in helping her heal to the extent she has. We also see just what a resourceful, fiercely independent and determined person she has become.

‘Her life had been and would always be about survival, and Briar knew she wanted to live, to experience the world Logan had opened up to her, to try to understand the ways of the heart more than she ever had in the past.’

Briar is just one of the powerful female characters who are the driving spirits of this book. There’s Laurie Eberhardt, an example of the strong pioneer women who matched their menfolk in battling the elements to grind out a living on the ranches of the period. And there’s Grace Perry, horse-breaker and crack shot, another loner who’s had to live by her wits to make her way in the world without the succour of home and family but who cannot resist the instinct to help Briar in her quest.

“You need me, Briar. It is impossible for me not to help. It is especially impossible for me not to help another woman.”  

All three of them have experienced hardship, cruelty and loss in their lives but survived through a combination of grit, determination and by acquiring the skills necessary to defend themselves as women alone in a brutal, often lawless environment.  And there’s Jack, a young man with his own traumatic history who has had to learn to survive on his own from early childhood and is seeking redemption for perceived past failures to act. Together, Briar, Grace and Jack embark on the dangerous journey to rescue Logan, each contributing their various skills and becoming in their own way a sort of family. As Jack reflects, “There are different ways to find a home and many people who might be called family”.

There is danger along the way despite the deceptive beauty of the landscape: ‘The sprinkling of red, gold, yellow, and orange leaves is slowly creeping higher each day, as if someone were moving from ridge to the next with a box of paints.’

A Dangerous Woman From Nowhere is an exhilarating combination of Wild West adventure story, moving love story, powerful evocation of the wild landscape of North America and celebration of female power and solidarity.

This book would have been complete perfection for me but for the epilogue. Suddenly the gritty, authentic feel the author had created throughout the rest of the novel seemed to give way to something out of ‘The Waltons’. I didn’t want to know all this stuff, I wanted to be left to imagine it for myself. I would very respectfully suggest: dump the epilogue, the book finishes quite perfectly without it.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, SparkPress, in return for an honest review.

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About the Author

Kris started writing the moment she could hold a pencil. She grew up in Wisconsin, graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a journalism degree and hit the ground running. Her father called her “the tornado”. She worked as a newspaper reporter, bureau chief, nationally syndicated columnist, magazine writer, university lecturer, bartender, waitress, worm harvester, window washer….to name a few. Her first two books were non-fiction and then Radish became a full-time novelist. The Elegant Gathering of White Snows, Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn, The Sunday List of Dreams, Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral and Searching for Paradise in Parker, P.A., The Shortest Distance Between Two Women, Hearts on a String, Tuesday Night Miracles, A Grand Day to Get Lost and The Year of Necessary Lies have won her acclaim and a great following. Her eleventh novel, A Dangerous Woman From Nowhere is being released in 2017. She is also the author of three works of non-fiction, Gravel on the side of the Road-Stories From A Broad Who Has Been There, Run, Bambi Run-The Beautiful Ex-Cop and Convicted Murderer Who Escaped to Freedom and Won America’s Heart and The Birth Order Effect: How to Better Understand Yourself and Others. She is working on a book of poetry, two new novels, a book of non-fiction and a few bottles of wine.

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