Bonnie Gardner, The Sergeant's Baby

The Sergeant's Baby

Bonnie Gardner

Harlequin American, May 2005, $4.99, 248 pp.

ISBN: 0373750714

Air Force Sergeant Danny Murphey believes he has found the woman for him as he loves Allison Carter; she reciprocates but they disagree over whether she should work. He insists no Murphey female ever held a job and his will follow tradition; she says that she enjoys working and will continue to do so. She leaves when her obstinate beloved cannot understand how important her work is.

In Fayetteville, North Carolina, Ally, whose mother comes from the Middle-Eastern country Tamahykla, is a civil servant teaching students at the Military Deployment Readiness School on the culture shock they will face when deployed to the Middle East. In her current class is her former lover Danny, who seeing she is several months pregnant, angrily concludes that she dumped him for a new lover until he confronts her; He believes the child she carries is his and plans to be in both their lives. Ally still loves the gruff NCO, but refuses to spend her life barefoot and pregnant at her master's beck and call.

THE SERGEANT'S BABY is an interesting military romance starring a likable heroine and an unlikable throwback cretin. The story line centers on the battle between the sexes, which is fun to follow. It is difficult to accept a sergeant in the modern military in which females fly bombers and serve as MPs in the combat zones would have difficulty allowing his spouse to teach even if family tradition says otherwise. Still Bonnie Gardner writes a fine tale that enables her audience to glimpse at what the military tries to do as part of soldier and unit readiness prior to troops deploying.

Harriet Klausner