I received a free review copy of this book from TellHarlequin.com.

Kody Douglas is half-white, half-Native American, and despite his loving foster parents, he's never found a world where he feels he belongs. But if there's one thing his upbringing taught him, it's that he can't leave a damsel in distress. So when Kody finds Charlotte Porter alone in a dust storm with no food or water to speak of, he does what his mother would have wanted - he brings her to his parents.

But Kody had a reason for leaving town - a secret daughter whom he doesn't want to see hurt the way he was. Charlotte, however, soon takes the little girl into her heart and fights for Kody to become a 'real' father to her.

The Good:
- The Christian themes (though not to my taste) were nicely handled. Kody's reasons for his loss of faith were persuasive, and his return to the beliefs of his childhood struck me as believable, though I thought it got a bit short shrift.

-Sometimes, Charlotte actually is spunky. There's a great scene where she takes on a couple of outlaws that are threatening her. Plus, I enjoyed watching her go to work and learning how valuable it was for her self-esteem to stand on her own two feet.

-The portrayal of Kody as stuck between two worlds where neither accepted him was an interesting theme. I found his situation poignant.

The Bad:

The heroine is prejudiced against Native Americans. Although she practically blows up at the hero for daring to suggest such a thing, she nonetheless accuses him of stealing and thinks:
"She'd prayed for rescue, someone to offer her a home. The only person to do so was a half-breed. And Lother (a particularly loathsome individual bent on
marrying her and using her as a brood-hen). She shuddered. [...:] Of the
two, Kody seemed slightly less undesirable."
Slightly? Then there's the time when some nasty persons call her a 'squaw' to which she replies "Of course they think evil of others." (parentheses my additions)

The writing itself raises some of the same general issues. The Native Americans in this story cycle between speaking normally, and sounding like they stepped out of a stereotypical old Western movie. I'm not joking. They actually say things like: "Doctor say there are special shoes." and "Be satisfied she happy."

But what really got to me was the heroine. She persists in seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses. She completely dismisses every one of Kody's concerns about facing prejudice by claiming that it's just ignorant people making nasty remarks. Not once does she acknowledge the fact that those remarks are extremely painful. She doesn't stand up for him when such remarks are made, and she completely dismisses the more dire consequences of prejudice - seemingly utterly forgetting that being in her presence at the beginning of the book almost got Kody lynched! Lynching is not one of those situations conducive to turning the other cheek.

It really upset me that she kept nagging, badgering, and threatening to blackmail Kody into doing what she felt was right with a child that she neither knew nor had any responsibility for. She seemed to be a really presumptuous busybody to me. And while the author had Kody point out how kind and understanding she was, I never saw any evidence of it. Instead she seemed rather closed-minded and unwilling to empathize with any other point of view.

The Bottom Line: If you choose to write about prejudice, you really should address the real issues. This wasn't merely a case of childhood sticks and stones. Really nasty things happened and still happen because of prejudice. And in this book at least, the heroine never seems to comprehend that, even when the evidence is right in front of her nose. I couldn't deal with the characters or the way the topic was handled. I wouldn't recommend this one.