cover image Cassandra

Cassandra

Gloria Dale Skinner. Pocket Books, $6.5 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-671-01138-3

Heiress Cassandra Rakefield is a tough young woman--and an angry one too--which isn't all that unusual in romances these days. The difference here is that Skinner (Juliana) has given her real motivation. Raised by her rancher grandfather, strong-willed Cass set her sights on lawyer Dustin Bennett from the first moment she met him in Kansas City in 1889. So she was perfectly willing when he seduced her on the night before their wedding. She wasn't so happy when he stranded her at the altar the next day or when he arrives at her ranch in Wyoming five years later to determine if she should be allowed access to the sizable inheritance managed by his father's firm. The rest of the plot is well-written, competently scripted romance fare: hero and heroine getting to know and trust each other, blemished only by the increasingly inevitable childhood trauma. But Skinner's heroine is more emotionally complex and believably strong than most, and her portrayal of frontier ranch life captures the proximity of nature, the isolation and the plain hard work. (Jan.)