July 18, 2021
Ginny Brandon, a senator’s daughter, is sent to nominally ride a wagon train to California, but is actually smuggling gold to Mexico to support the Emperor’s cause. She is relentlessly drawn to the wagon train guide, Steve Morgan. But unbeknownst to her, Steve is actually a spy intent on thwarting her father’s plans.
What can I say about this book? It’s a wild ride, but one I never wanted to get off of. Ginny and Steve are a quintessential, swashbuckling romance hero and heroine, but Rogers is not afraid to put them utterly through the wringer. Despite the length of the story, it never drags, and the historical aspects are incorporated smoothly into the plot. I’m definitely reading more Rogers.
2nd Time Reading – June 7, 2026
What sets this book apart in my eyes from other bodice rippers of the era is how modern to the 1970s specifically (which is when the book was published) Steve and Ginny feel. There’s a real battle of the sexes going on between them, and the issue which keeps them from embarking on a successful relationship (beyond, you know, the abduction, the sexual assault, and the womanizing) is that Steve simply does not know what it’s like to meet a woman he can respect.
But it’s also that amoral streak and character failings that make them such compelling leads too. The author is not shy about letting both the hero and heroine be selfish, grasping, and arrogant, which is a welcome change from the heroine having to save the rakish hero from himself plot you get way more often. And they perfectly suit the big, bad, dangerous world through which they move, and you understand why they are as they are.
Of course, the saga of Steve and Ginny does go on for three more books, but this one works neatly as a standalone, so I think I’ll leave them this way. I do hear tell that Steve genuinely grows a sense of empathy in the fourth book, but that’s a bit too far off to tempt me, I think.
