Fawcett Gold Medal, $4.99, ISBN 0-449-14771-1
Historical Romance, 1994
Ah yes, the good old days when it was still okay to write romances featuring lily-white fake Native American heroines in a clinch with either a pure-blooded Native American or a white dude hero. Which side portrayed as the “bad guys” will depend on the bloke attached to the pee-pee that the heroine is fond of, of course.
In the case of Peggy Hanchar’s Wild Sage, it’s attached to the hirsute groin of a white guy, so the Comanches in this story are mostly brutal, dishonorable villains that scalp even little kids.
Our heroine, Wild Sage, is actually adopted by the token nice Comanches in this story, Ten Bears and his wife White Weasel. She’s to be married to Two Wolves, and she spends her time wondering whether she’s hot enough for him and wishing that she too is pure-blooded Comanche for him.
I am going to call her White Sage from now on, because she is.
Well, it’s not long before the US Army sweeps down on Crosstimbers, and conveniently enough Ten Bears and White Weasel are quickly killed. This leaves our heroine free to completely leave behind the people that raised her without any baggage to carry along with her.
Sure enough, she’s soon Jenny, under the care of a nice family that has some kids for our heroine to nurture her maternal instincts, all the better for when she pops out bazillion babies for our hero Caleb Hunter, a soldier that simply hates all Comanches and has spent time from his teens to present day gutting those baby-scalpers like Rambo mowing down Russians during happy hour.
Can he let go of his hatred to plunge himself with full abandon into his cross-cultural immersion experience with White Sage? Oh right, she’s a white lady at the end of the day, so it’s more like a rehabilitation experience than anything cross-cultural.
You know, there is a good story in here, somewhere. It can be a tale of utmost pathos, with two people that have lost everything trying to connect despite all the racial hatred separating them. The result could be beautiful, cathartic, whatever.
Sadly, instead I get a heroine with a one-dimensional, child-like threadbare personality. White Sage isn’t a person as much as she is a brittle bag of damsel in distress tropes, with her only focus in life being the ability to get her man to think that she is hot and worth shagging. Once in a while, she feels trapped between two worlds, but any angst or emotional conflict that she experiences is quickly washed away in a just like that manner.
As a result, there’s nothing much about the heroine that feels remotely grown-up. She’s also easily swayed in her thoughts and principles. When Caleb tells her how vicious and dishonorable Two Wolves is—of course he is—she’s like, oh, okay, I love white culture now, yay.
Needless to say, Caleb doesn’t have much character development to go through, as the heroine is more than happy to just be whatever he wants her to be. His character arc, as a result, is him letting go years of hatred for the Comanches for that one woman that he wants to boink so bad.
Because of the way the author handles her characters, there isn’t much emotional resonance to be had here. For her, all is okay, easy come and easy go, when she finally has a man in her life to make kids with. For him, Comanches are evil, but this “Comanche” is actually white with nary any inferior DNA in her, so yay, he’s struck the lottery.
All the potential sweeping drama and poignancy, sigh, that will never be because the characters are so one-dimensional and emotionally stunted.
However, I have to say this: this is a very enjoyable read despite all the issues I’ve mentioned earlier. The pacing is solid, and things happen in an often rollicking manner that has me at the edge of my seat. Sure, the tropes are out in full force, and the story is very predictable as a result, but it’s hard to put down the book.
Also, the secondary characters display far more nuance and depths than the hero and the heroine, which is puzzling but at the same time, I’m not complaining as it actually makes the story more enjoyable. For example, the family that takes White Sage in express remorse about the way white folks treat the heroine badly for not fitting in “correctly”, and the speech given to White Sage is unexpectedly mature and self aware. How does the heroine respond? She nods dumbly.
Because of this, I can only wonder whether there’s some unwritten rule that the main characters—the hero, the villain, and especially the heroine—have to be one-dimensional dumb bunnies. The author is definitely capable of nuances, but she invests them on the secondary characters instead when it should be on the main characters.
Anyway, the TL;DR is that I find this an entertaining, if emotionally vacuous, story. It’s alright for an undemanding read, although it may also trigger certain readers with its portrayal of Native Americans. Just don’t expect any mature emotional drama from it, as the hero and oh god, especially the heroine are one-note through and through.
