cover image Love at Last/Large Print

Love at Last/Large Print

Garda Parker. Zebra, $4.5 (511pp) ISBN 978-0-8217-4158-0

The first half of Parker's ( Out of the Blue ) romance is standard fare: Gail, a 50-something guidance counselor three years away from retirement at a ritzy private school, takes off with three friends to spend her summer vacation on a dude ranch. Once there, she becomes infatuated with a local man and is reluctant to leave. The novel's second half is more complex as Gail reacts to her new situation. She changes her life, quitting her job back home and returning to Montana to teach at an impoverished reservation school. The object of her affections is a Cheyenne named Hawk who resents white people in general, and in particular those who come out west on vacation. But Gail manages to get close to him through their mutual concern for Willow, a half-Cheyenne orphan drawn to Gail because she has been told that her mother had short, blonde hair, as does Gail. Perhaps most refreshingly, Gail's best friend Catherine also finds herself in the throes of love. She too ends up back in Montana, eventually moving in with Hawk's half-sister Jerrie, a woman capable of snapping the head off of a rattlesnake who has opened a shelter for battered women and children on the reservation. (May)