Customer Reviews

The Pride of Hannah Wade

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book not too long after it came out and I found it riveting! It's one of my all time favorite books! Hannah Wade is a beautiful officer's wife who gets captured by the Apaches. Any other gentle-born lady would kill herself rather than live after being violated by an Indian, but Hannah was determined to survive. She learns quickly from the harsh treatment and begins to settle into the Apache life. But always in the back of her mind was the desire to escape. This story goes into graphic detail of her horrible experiences and and the cruel treatment she receives after rescue. Only the love of one man strong enough to respect her strength helps her see a promising future. This book made me laugh and cry. It gave a glimpse into the Apache life and way of thinking as it revealed the pettiness and bigotry against them. There were also other characters that supported this story that made it hard to put the book down. There wasn't graphic sex, but there was adventure and suspense. I'm going to buy it to keep forever!

I was dissapointed in this book, since i was expecting to read another great romance novel from Janet Dailey. This novel was entertaining and a good read, however, there was hardly any romance going on between Hannah and Cutter or anyone else for that matter.

This is a very balanced story, not precisely a romance, not entirely a western adventure. It is about Hannah Wade, the wife of a calvery officer, captured by on an apache raid. She is given as a slave to her captor's wife and eventually taken by him as his second wife before she is rescued and returned to her not entirely grateful spouse. It has very strong charactors who are not just the usual cardboard cutouts seen in many indian romances. Whether you like them, or dislike them, her people feel and react like real people. Janet Dailey deals accurately and even-handedly with the cultures and the attitudes likely to be found during this part of the indian wars, showing both the strengths and the warts of both sides of the conflict. What I liked best was that she does not deal with rape as a tool of romance, and there is no dewey-eyed maiden who stuns the noble chief into instant love and they go riding off into a life of perfect coexistance with nature, and yadda yadda. Hannah is a strong woman bent on survival and her experience with the apaches range from the brutality of her capture and early slavery to her adjustment and appreciation of many aspects of the Apache culture as well as her changing attitudes toward the band she travels with and how her views of the warrior who captured her change from intense hatred to unhappy ambivalence towards towards the end of her captivity. Her difficult return to white society makes her draw on the strength that allowed her to survive 11 months of captivity and remake her own life and find the man who can appreciate her as is, with no apologies for surviving. It is very well written with people you care about and would like to learn more about.

It was fascinating to me. I read it years ago but it is one that stuck in my mind. The contrast between an Indian couple, a Military couple, and a civilian couple were dynamic. It was ironic though that the women portrayed, had more in common then initially obvious. I love to watch couple interaction, and in these 3 cultures it's obvious that Janet Dailey either lived there, or did extensive homework.