cover image Desperate Crossing

Desperate Crossing

Barbara Riefe. Forge, $22.95 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-312-86071-4

Riefe (Against All Odds: The Lucy Scott Mitchum Story) once again takes on a heroine from the annals of the American West. Only 19 years old, Jenny Sanders Pryor sets out along the Oregon Trail with her new husband, John, and adopted seven-year-old daughter, eager to start a new life in what John promises her is ""God's country."" Along the way, Jenny finds that the ways of the frontier are a far cry from those of the genteel East. When the emigrants are attacked by marauding Sioux, Jenny is captured and forced to become the wife of their chief, Ottawa. Traded to the Blackfeet, she is again forced to be present at the attack on a white fort. Through it all, she keeps her dignity, repeatedly standing up to her captors and eventually escaping from them. Reunited, she and John reach Oregon and live happily until John's death. Finding herself a widow at 51, Jenny takes up the study of medicine and becomes a physician. Riefe tells her story with action-packed verve and satisfying period detail--although Jenny's notions of justice, decency and the proper role for women seem firmly lodged in the 1990s. (Dec.)