Albuquerque

Noah McCloud, a former confederate officer, comes to Albuquerque to forget the sweetheart who jilted him during the war, and finds himself falling in love with April Danby, who leads a double life

Orwig ( San Antonio ) sets her latest at the end of the Civil War in the picturesque Southwestern town of the title. The book's best feature is its winning heroine, April Danby, who sings bawdy songs in a saloon but maintains her virtue in honor of a boy she fell in love with at age 12. But Orwig wobbles on credibility. Noah McCloud, brother of a Confederate soldier whom April befriended in the final hours of his life, is convinced that she has purloined the family gold that Ralph was carrying but about which April claims ignorance. For all his clever schemes to catch April in her supposed lie, the obvious solution to the mystery doesn't occur to Noah until halfway through the novel. Other fundamental episodes similarly strain belief. The result is that romantic tension gives way to exasperation, and the lovers seem not star-crossed but slow-witted.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.