Secrets of a Midnight Moon

This first novel set in 1850s Northern California has little to offer beyond stock characters and a simplistic moral stance. Fleeing an unhappy love affair and unforgiving parents, Anna Jenson arrives in California to begin her new job as a teacher. As it happens, sp ok/pk Nicolas Gaspard, son of an Indian woman and a white man, needs a schoolteacher and kidnaps Anna. Nicolas is used to swiping people: known as ``the Marauder,'' he rescues Indian children from local whites who use them as slaves, and he has created a secret haven for his wards. Once Anna overcomes her annoyance at being abducted and sees how good Nicolas is with the children, she becomes not only a willing contributor to the community but Nicolas's lover (though since Nicolas sometimes acts like an insensitive jerk, this takes a little longer). Then illness sweeps through the small band, and when Nicolas returns Anna to the white community, she is scorned for her involvement with the Indians and finds herself under the roof of the man most determined to track down and destroy the Marauder--his own half brother. (Nov.)