Only Forever: Only Forever

Cates's ( To Catch a Flame ) heroine fails to live up to the promise of her spirited if incredible entrance. As a young woman about to take nun's vows in famine-stricken 19th-century Ireland, Ashleen O'Shea steals a chalice to save four orphans from the workhouse and buy passage with them to America. Soon, however, she devolves into an insipidly sunny miss engaged in melodramatic adventures. Arriving in Missouri, she meets Kennisaw Jones and nurses him when he is fatally wounded by his old enemies, the Garvey brothers. Before he dies, Kennisaw asks Ashleen to warn Garret MacQuade that the Garvey brothers are loose; in turn he gives her title to an abandoned farm in Texas. Ashleen finds Garret, an initially vulgar loutpp. 54-7 who turns out to be tender and good with children, and succumbs to his charms. Garret guides Ashleen to the farm, where the Garvey brothers track them down; it was on this farm that, hunting Kennisaw's buried treasure, they murdered Garret's family 20 years earlier. Had there been any chance that the Garveys could do any damage before being wiped out by the hero, it might--perhaps--have made the story less silly. (Apr.)