cover image No Greater Love: Mother's Story-27dp

No Greater Love: Mother's Story-27dp

Alison Irving. St. Martin's Press, $4.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-312-92463-8

Although this historical romance set in the vast landscape of 1840s Texas hums with personal and political conflict, Irving's bustling characters lack depth. Even the most complex among them, wicked stepmother Louise Lynchley Daventry, is so consistently (and, to the reader, so obviously) vicious and unprincipled that she becomes boring. She conceals her wickedness long enough to lure widower Richard Daventry, a prosperous Texas plantation owner, into marriage. Richard's headstrong 17-year-old daughter, Monty, recognizes Louise for what she is, and the women become immediate enemies. Richard's hopes that Texas will remain an independent republic seem to be crumbling, due partially to the political efforts of men like Mason Regrett, a neighboring rancher who wants Texas to join the U.S. Whenever Mason and Monty meet up, they set off sparks like flint striking steel, but Mason's differences with Monty's father seem to make a relationship between the young couple impossible. However, events soon throw the two together on an errand crucial to Texas's entry into the union. Alison Irving is a pseudonym for Billie Forman Holmes and Ann Forman Barron, writing together as a team for the first time. Barron is also the author of Liliane . (Apr.)