Saving Hope

Much published romance author Daley (Hearts on the Line) earnestly tackles child prostitution in this opener to the Men of the Texas Rangers series. Ranger Wyatt Sheridan, a member of the Child Rescue Task Force, is called when the body of a teenage girl is found in a field near a van belonging to Beacon of Hope, an agency that works to rehabilitate teenage prostitutes. Sixteen-year-old Rose, a promising client at Beacon of Hope, had “borrowed” the van after receiving a call from a distressed friend—another teen prostitute. Agency director Kate Winslow is determined to find Rose, and Ranger Sheridan, whose own daughter is 14, is an ally in the search. Daley has the talent to make things gallop forward, and her dialogue is crisp and engaging. Yet the story is exceedingly earnest, and the characterization is wooden: Kate is impossibly saintly, and the trauma in Sheridan’s past doesn’t ring true. Contemporary Christian fiction has risen above the agenda of getting saved by Jesus, but it is weighed down here by a social issue agenda, however laudable. Agency: Steve Laube Agency. (Mar.)