Rachel Lemoyne

Half-Choctaw Rachel LeMoyne tries to make peace between her Presbyterian upbringing and the Choctaw culture in this simplistic historical romance, which travels the Trail of Tears in 1832, visits Ireland during the potato famine and ends with the 1848 Wagon Trail in Oregon. Chosen by the missionaries and the Indian Council to go to Ireland as a representative of the Choctaw Nation, Rachel brings corn to West Ireland, where starvation is at its worst. There she meets 25-year-old millwright Darragh Ronan, a widower who has lost his entire family to the hunger and who is sent to prison for using his landlord's mill to grind Rachel's maize. Rachel smuggles Darragh out of jail by marrying him, and the newlyweds, now in America and pursued by the authorities, travel west as members of a wagon train. Threats from other Indian tribes, snakebite, a buffalo hunt and tensions with a bigoted wagonmaster punctuate their journey, as Rachel and Darragh journey to Oregon, falling in love in the process. The latest installment in Forge's Women of the West series, Charbonneau's (Waltzing in Ragtime) superficial saga is predictable but partly redeemed by its colorful atmosphere and brave, resourceful heroine. (June)