Comanche Rose

Famed Texas Ranger Hap Walker just missed saving the Bryce family from a Comanche war party in 1870, so three years later, when he stumbles across the captured widow, Annie, he feels beholden to her. For Annie, who finds that the pain of captivity has been replaced by the condemnation of a white society that judges her a fallen woman, her remaining hope is to find her daughter among the Comanches. And Hap, increasingly impressed by Annie's gutsiness, is willing to do the foolhardy-roam through Comanche territory to help her do it. Mills writes fine, humane dialogue and makes good use of history, giving her story some taste of the not always attractive attitudes of Manifest Destiny. It's too bad that Annie, who starts out strong and appealing, becomes rather squishy toward the end, finally, it seems, being reduced to her fertility (``Out of loss and despair, he'd singlehandedly made a new life for her. And within her''). (Jan.)