Linda Lael Miller, McKettrick’s Choice

McKettrick's Choice

Linda Lael Miller

HQN, Jun 2005, $16.95, 352 pp.

ISBN: 0373770294

In 1888 on the ranch of his biological father in the Arizona Territory, Holt McKettrick is waiting for the preacher to arrive to marry him to Margaret when a visitor from his home state of Texas arrives with a note that he carried from friend Frank Corrales. Apparently the man who raised him John Cavanaugh is being dispossessed from his land and his best friend Gabe is going to be hung as a murdering horse thief. He informs his bride to be that they will not marry at least that day, leaves his daughter with her grandfather, and rushes back to Texas to try to save the day.

In San Antonio, Judge Fellows is exasperated with his daughter Lorelei who refuses to wed her fianc Creighton Banning. Instead as Holt arrives in town, she burns her wedding dress and flees to the dilapidated ranch she inherited from her late mother. Her neighbor Holt helps her and soon they fall in love though her father convicted Gabe and her influential former fianc has made the bid for John's land.

The follow up to the McKettrick bride trilogy is filled with suspense and action, but belongs to a pair of rowdies who do not believe in love until the emotion slaps each of them in the heart. The storyline is fast-paced, but also provides a deep look at late nineteenth century Texas through the colorful cast. Linda Lael Miller provides a terrific western romance that embellishes why this is one of the sub-genre's better miniseries in the last few years.

Harriet Klausner