A Port in the Storm

Genandt follows The Quality of Clemency with a heartwarming but threadbare depiction of a 19th-century Wyoming ranching community. Banished from Boston by her father for a minor indiscretion, lovely Margaret Ward is welcomed to the Lazy R by the appealing Randall family. Margaret quickly adapts to ranching life and takes over a one-room schoolhouse with aplomb, but is torn among three handsome but very different men: attractive Phil from Boston; charming David Randall, heir to the ranch; and Tee Spencer, the taciturn foreman, who somehow appears whenever she makes a fool of herself. All are stock characters, and Margaret, despite various ditzy moments, is transformed much too easily from an elegantly dressed Easterner to a practical woman ready to commit to the sometimes violent life of the frontier. (Apr.)