Customer Reviews

Night Flower

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With all the negative baggage Lee and Melanie bring to their reluctant (read "forced") marriage, this could have been a pretty dark story, except that Shirl Henke uses some very hot love scenes and fun, oddball characters to lighten things up. Like Father Gus, a German priest sent to minister people who speak only English or Spanish. When we first see him, he's babbling in German to a crowd that wants to beat the snot out of him for impersonating a priest. Another quirky character is Stella Wolcott, a Temperance crusader whom young Lame Deer calls a feote vulture. She learns that Lee has been seen in one of San Antonio's leading bordellos. Melanie has left him and perhaps out of spite he has gone to the cathouse. Well, of course, purely as an investigative reporter you understand, Melanie has to accompany Stella and her brigade of Temperance ladies on a raid of that very bordello, a raid that turns into a comic brawl as Melanie and one of the "working girls" square off in a ballsy catfight that gets them all arrested. After Melanie's editor (another character himself) bails her out, Obedience decides to have a woman to woman talk with the girl, a talk oiled by some 90 proof "white lightning" that leaves Melanie stumbling into the arms of her husband who whisks her upstairs for the kind of loving that the young woman never imagined existed. All and all, this is a great read that brings together all of the main and secondary characters from the first two Texas books in a truly satisfying ending.

Lee and Melanie have known one another since she was 12 and he was 18. At that first meeting sparks flew. Now as young adults (she's 23, he's 29) they are both back in Texas. He's trying to rebuild a ranch and live down a bloody past. She's also running from the past by being a crusading newspaper reporter for a San Antonio paper. She gets wind of attempts of corrupt public officials, motivated by greed and hatred, who are trying to stir up another war between Texans and Comanches. When she tries to spy on a meeting between Comancheros and the Indians, Lee tries to keep her from getting herself killed. In frustration, she pulls a gun on him. He takes it away. They grapple and the grappling is about to turn into some "tumbling" until the two are interrupted by Jim Slade (Lee's surrogate brother) and Rafe Fleming (Melanie's father). The compromised couple is forced into a shotgun wedding that each tells himself/herself they don't want (except of course they really do). They live apart--he's at his ranch, she's in town--because they can't live together without tearing at each other both in and out of bed (in some highly erotic love scenes) for which each feels stupidly guilty or blames the other. This bizarre estrangement leads to some funny scenarios that give way to tense action as each is drawn deeper into the investigation of a blood bath in the making. This tale of adventure and warring lovers is an enjoyable read, lightened with some humor (almost farce in a couple of cases) and the appearance of old friends from the previous Texas Trilogy books. A worthy book by itself and a fine capper to the trilogy.