cover image THE BINDING OATH

THE BINDING OATH

Sybil Downing, THE BINDING OATH Sybil Downin. , $24.95 (200pp) ISBN 978-0-87081-607-9

Bootleggers, crooked cops and the Ku Klux Klan can't keep a good woman down in this slight but warmhearted historical novel set in Prohibition-era Colorado. Liz O'Brien is a woman in a man's world, one of only two female reporters on staff at the Denver Post in 1922. Usually relegated to the "Neighbors" beat, O'Brien one day gets her big break: a chance to interview the KKK's Grand Dragon, who's called a press conference to announce he's forcing a vote to recall the city's new district attorney. But O'Brien suspects the KKK is interested in more than local politics. Against the advice of her highly skeptical superiors, O'Brien resolves to investigate the case. She quickly uncovers two murders, a bootlegging operation and a KKK conspiracy to take over the political apparatus of the entire state. Downing (Ladies of the Goldfield Stock Exchange) does a good job of creating an independent, likable heroine: the feisty and political-minded O'Brien owns her own house and is a veteran of the women's suffrage movement. Downing also creates a stable of memorably strong female supporting figures, including a prominent lawyer, a defiant rancher and even an eight-year-old girl. But in the end, she can't stay true to her own message: as if in a Hollywood romance, the heroine is rescued at the last moment by her dashing pilot boyfriend, who literally swoops down out of the sky. At a slim 200 pages, the novel lacks the detail or romance for a historical epic, and features too little suspense to be a successful thriller. Readers will most likely be drawn to it for its portrait of the American West during Prohibition and its focus on women's issues in the years immediately after suffrage. (Apr.)