Retribution Rails
The Vengeance Road series, Book 2
Erin Bowman
Clarion Books
Fiction, YA Western
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The frontier public knows him as the Rose Kid, a cold-blooded boy who, at only fifteen, slaughtered an entire family of farmers and ran off to join up with the notorious Rose Riders. But they have it all wrong: Reece was about to be slaughtered, too, until the leader of the Riders, Luther Rose, decided he'd be more useful alive than dead. Reece had on him a distinctive gold coin, one very much like the kind carried by the gunslinger who killed Luther's half-brother ten years back, and the boy insists he could identify the man who gave it to him. A day hasn't gone by that Reece hasn't hated himself for what he's had to do to stay alive, that he hasn't dreamed of escape, but the one time he did try sneaking away they made him pay dearly. Which is how he wound up on the train to Prescott with the other Riders, stealing a lucrative payroll and robbing the passengers while they're at it... and how he nearly got shot by a young woman.
Charlotte knows she should've stayed behind in Yuma, like her mother told her. Only one week ago, her beloved father died after a long illness, willing the family fortune to his wife and daughter... and bringing trouble from a devious uncle who wants those riches for himself. Mother went to Prescott to sort things out with the lawyer, but Charlotte isn't about to be pushed aside like a little girl. Besides, she aspires to follow in the footsteps of pioneering lady reporter Nellie Bly, and how is she going to find anything worth reporting on if she sits meekly in her room? She didn't count on her train being held up, but fortunately she had her father's Colt on her when it was... and she kept her cool enough to be able to describe the robbers when she came to the next town. As if anyone west of Colorado wouldn't know the Rose Riders - or the face of the notorious killer, the Rose Kid, when he's staring right at her.
Bad luck lands Charlotte and Reece together, one as he flees from both the law and his former crewmates, the other as a hostage of circumstance. Though they start as rivals, they soon find their goals unexpectedly aligning - but can that bond last against scheming relatives, relentless outlaws, complicated histories, and flying bullets?
REVIEW: This "companion novel" takes place ten years after Bowman's top-notch Western adventure Vengeance Road, and crosses over with a couple of the characters from that book, but more or less stands on its own.
Arizona has changed substantially in that decade, most notably with the arrival of the railroad and the prosperity (and problems) that brings. The characters are also their own people, and not rehashes of the ones in the first story. Charlotte is nothing like the tough, vengeance-driven Kate (teen protagonist of the first book, now a young married woman and soon-to-be mother), being a daughter of privilege and less country-wise (and people-wise; she takes the printed word of news articles as gospel, as well as the notion that people tend to be either Good or Bad and that's all there is to it). Still, she's no fainting flower, and pursues her dreams despite the naysayers who insist that journalism is an improper and impractical pursuit for a woman. Reece, on the other hand, was dealt a bad hand in life, first from a drunkard father, and then when the farm family he was boarding with was struck by the Rose Riders, and yet again when Luther not only took him as an essential hostage to point the way to the gunslinger, but seems intent on turning him into a true outlaw and Rose Rider, taking on a paternal role that Reece can't help responding to. From their first meeting aboard the train, Reece and Charlotte's association is bound to be rocky, and it doesn't notably improve for some time later. Meanwhile, Charlotte discovers just what lengths her crooked uncle has gone to in order to ensure her father's will is disregarded and the family fortune willed to herself and her mother instead go to him... an inheritance to be sealed by a forced marriage, either of her mother to the uncle or herself to her uncle's son. Worse, the very people Charlotte and her mother were counting on to protect them and enforce the will seem to have been paid off or persuaded by the man's unfounded slander against them. Reece finds himself pursuing the gunslinger alone, knowing that he will never be free of Luther Rose until he delivers the outlaw's brother's killer to the Rose Riders, but instead finds himself pulled into a story of lost gold and vengeance sought and found a decade earlier when the trail leads to the homestead of Kate Colton, nee Thompson. Kate has ridden the road Charlotte and Reece are on now, a road of vengeance and justification of all means to their desired ends, and knows where it leads - to rash actions you can never undo, consequences you cannot control, and a dark cloud of regret that you can never outrun but only learn to live with. Of course, the youngsters don't really understand, not even Reece with his hard and compromised life, until it's too late and they have their own dark clouds.
As in the first book, everyone has extra sides to them, even the baddies, and nobody is beyond mistakes, nor does anyone get through the book without some blood on their hands. For some reason, I found it a little weaker than the first story; Kate was just such a strong character in her own book that her arrival threatens to swamp Reece and Charlotte, and neither of the new characters really grabbed me the way the ones did in Vengeance Road. Still, it's a well-paced, active novel with few slow spots, quite enjoyable on the whole.
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Vengeance Road (Erin Bowman) - My Review
Thieving Forest (Martha Conway) - My Review
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