The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons

The Bronze Horseman begins in 1941 as the Germans have just invaded Russia, but seventeen year old Tatiana Metanova still stops to enjoy the day with an ice-cream, and as a bus passes she sees a soldier staring at her from across the street. Alexander Belov is mesmerized from the first at the sight of Tatiana, but is in for a surprise when he follows her home and finds her sister is a woman he’s met before – and that sister thinks Alexander is in love with her. Out of love for her older sister, Tatiana keeps silent and encourages Alexander to court Dasha. Much of the story continues as the Germans advance on Leningrad, finally resulting in a siege of the city as Tatiana and her family struggles to survive amidst the ever growing shortage of food and fuel, along with the oncoming Russian winter. When on leave Alexander continues to involve himself with the Metanova family, not able to stay away from Tatiana even though he must hide his feelings for her, although his “friend” Dimitri openly courts Tatiana.

Since I am not into book reports and spoilers I’m not going to reveal much more of the plot, although Alexander does have a deep dark secret from his past that Dimitri holds over Alexander’s head that threatens both his and Tatiana’s eventual happiness, and finally culminates in a hair-raising attempt to escape from Soviet Russia. The good – the scenes in Leningrad were chilling, as people literally starved to death and dropped where they were (and left there) as bombs rained down around them daily. Alexander’s devotion to Tatiana was very endearing, and I loved the scenes where he dealt with her injuries after the bombing. Sigh…

The problematic –  Tatiana’s never ending suffering at the hands of her family as she sacrifices all during the siege without a word of complaint (you know any seventeen year old who would put up with that??). Just stepping aside and letting her self-centered sister have the man she loves? Tatiana getting a private hospital room in overcrowded Leningrad?  Once the cast came off her leg she was pretty much healed and able to trudge up and down icy stairs and streets with no discomfort or slowness? But the worst for me was the idyllic setting around page 600 that went on and on and on and on – I got the picture already and I did not need 100+ pages of nothing but sex and sex and more sex. Where was the editor?

So why am I still giving this one four stars even though I agree with the flaws pointed out by the critical reviewers on Amazon? Since I flat out couldn’t keep my nose out of the book and the carpet didn’t get vacuumed and the floors didn’t get mopped this weekend, I guess that’s a good indication that despite the flaws I was pretty much sucked into the story and thoroughly enjoyed it and plan on reading the next in the trilogy Tatiana and Alexander. Just be warned that if you’re not able to get past the nitpicks and the author’s somewhat repetitive style, I suspect this is not the book for you.

Paint the Wind by Cathy Cash Spellman

Tags

Colorado, North America, us history

  The story of one woman and the two brothers who loved her in Colorado’s Cloud City. What fun and darn near unputdownable! Paint the Wind begins as ten year old Fancy Deverell’s parents are murdered and their Louisiana plantation burned by marauding Yankee soldiers. Loyal slave Atticus saves Fancy from the destruction and with no other family left he takes Fancy along as they head west for a better life. After being on the road for a couple of years they meet up with a motley group of misfits in a circus run by Wes Jarvis and the spooky gypsy Magda. After several years on the road the circus disbands and Fancy and Atticus once again head west, but Atticus’s health fails them in the Mosquito Mountains of Colorado and Fancy is left on her own as a deadly snow storm hits and she takes a tumble down a mountain side…..

Meanwhile the story switches to that of brothers Chance and Hart McAllister who leave their Kansas home behind at the death of their parents and head west to Colorado where they meet gunman Ford Jameson and miner Bandana McBain. Bandana takes the boys in as partners digging for silver in the mountains surrounding Oro City (soon to be Leadville when the silver boom hits), and on the way home to their mountain cabin Chance spots a bit of red cloth and a banjo sticking out of the snow and a near-frozen Fancy is rescued in the nick of time. Fancy spends the winter snowbound with the boys and stays the summer working the mine with them, as both brothers fall in love with the beauteous Fancy — but she can only chose one — will it be the reckless, gambling, womanizing live on the seat of your pants Chance or the steadfast and faithful Hart?

Desperate not to come between the brothers and longing to establish herself as an actress Fancy leaves the boys and after a wild auction to raise money for her grub stake she heads for New York City. Once there, she struggles to support herself and her daughter, and eventually accepts an offer she can’t refuse from ruthless businessman Jason Madigan. Fancy’s travels finally bring her back to Leadville and the McAllister brothers, now rich from their silver mine, but she can only marry one of the two brothers and a heart broken Jason begins his plot to bankrupt the man who took Fancy from him.

Well that’s about all of the story I’m going to tell, there’s a whole lot more to Fancy’s tale in this 800 page paperback that kept me reading well into the wee hours. The story of Fancy and the McAllister brothers takes the reader through heartache, treachery, great wealth, financial disaster, and more until it finally culminates in a daring escape from a remote insane asylum in the Rocky Mountains along with a delightful sting worthy of Newman and Redford to catch the baddies who done Fancy wrong.

All in all a near perfect read and a jolly good yarn, my only quibbles are that I did find some of the secondary characters to be a bit stereotyped — the Madam with the heart of Gold, Ford the gunslinger, Wu the Chinaman, the circus folks — along with a few bits of language that didn’t quite seem to fit the period. If you’re willing to set those minor issues aside and want to sit back and lose yourself in the past with a big sprawling epic of soap opera proportions set in the old west, this is one book well worth looking in to. 4.5/5 stars.