Sun Hawk

The first novel in Edwards's new series manages to combine the worst stereotypes of the American West and the romance genre. Chief Summer Hope, the beautiful but hapless female leader of the Northern Lights band of Ojibwa, is captured by evil white traders and then rescued by the handsome Sun Hawk, the ""white chief"" of another Ojibwa tribe. Rendered unconscious during her rescue, Summer Hope awakes with no memory of her past and improbably imprisons Sun Hawk. Love at first fight is only the beginning of a predictable sequence of misunderstandings and lovemaking, during which the two chiefs scheme against the hostile English soldiers and the menacing traders who desire Summer Hope. A weak subplot involving Sun Hawk's long-lost white father, who has appeared in Summer Hope's village to establish a church, provides further explanation of Sun Hawk's white Indian identity. After Pierre DuSault, the most odious of the traders, attempts to recapture Summer Hope, a massacre of Indians and soldiers occurs and the two tribes of Ojibwa unite under the leadership of Sun Hawk, while Summer Hope decides that her destiny is fulfilled by having Sun Hawk's babies and learning how to cook. The hackneyed language interlaced with Ojibwa words (""How wonderful it will be,"" Summer Hope said sighing. ""To be a gee-mah-mah, mother. To be a gee-wee-oo, wife!"") renders this novel a parody of romance. (May)