The Overland Trail

In the second volume of the publisher's Women of the West series (after Kathleen O'Neal Geer's Thin Moon and Cold Mist), Lee imagines an unusual heroine--an expectant mother who becomes a gunslinging outlaw by the end of her perilous cross-country journey. It's May 1846. After an uneventful trip from Philadelphia, America Hollis, 21, and her new husband, Will, arrive in Independence, Mo., to rendezvous with the wagon train that will take them to the Oregon Territories. Four months pregnant with the child of her dead lover, America is slowly getting to know the Harvard-educated lawyer she hurriedly married only three months ago. Among their fellow wagon-train travelers are the mean-spirited Reverend Sanford, his wife, Muriel, and their son, Lem. After Will dies in a freak accident, the Sanfords reluctantly take America into their wagon, but in time they abandon her but keep her newborn daughter, Sierra. The plot picks up speed as America and her newfound Paiute Indian friends, including the handsome Black Wolf, search for Sierra, leading to a dramatic conclusion. Lee, author of the Jefferson Birch western series, has written an inspiring tale, adding to the genre's growing number of resourceful frontier heroines. (June)