Violet Fire
Brenda Joyce
AVON, January 2008, 368 pp
Reissue
ISBN-10: 0380755785
ISBN-13: 9780380755783
Western – The Bragg Saga
$7.99 (US) $8.50 (CDN)

Reviewed by Farley
September 2008

What happens when everybody’s darling pursues one of the biggest prudes romance has ever known?  

Rathe Bragg has always had it easy.  As the baby of the Bragg family, his family adores him and, as a child, he has always been able to charm his way out of any punishment his parents might come up with—combined.  A convenient supply of endless good luck ensures Rathe grows into his rich, drop-dead gorgeous self, but who would have thought that for someone so star-kissed, the future Mrs. Rathe Bragg would come barreling into his life waving a Colt six-shooter and dressed in the ugliest rags man has ever known?

Grace O’Rourke is independent, feisty and has devoted her life to crusading for the betterment of the world.  There really are more important things in the world than worrying about the pitying looks that people give her for being unmarried at twenty-seven.  When a protest gone wrong leaves her blacklisted in New York City and without her prized teaching license, she accepts a post as a governess at Melrose, conveniently leaving out her jail record and plotting to slowly win the women over to her modern ideas about marriage, temperance, and divorce—at the very least.  She might have gotten away with it, too, if she hasn’t the worst luck of running headlong—literally!—into a prime witness of her scandalous, gun-toting night, crashing New York’s finest.  All hope of him not remembering flies out the window when Rathe decides to do the dirty and merrily blackmails her for his silence.

A ploy to wangle a kiss evolves into a slow but determined pursuit as Rathe finds himself falling for an aging spinster who refuses to allow herself to be seduced by the personification of everything whom she considers to be wrong with the modern 1870’s man.  While she’s secretly thrilled that this gorgeous man is dogging her every step, it does put a crimp in her plans to reform Natches. 

In a time when women are expected to be meek and accepting, Rathe is shocked at how Grace would dare anything for what she believes in, and while he’s very impressed and more than a little intrigued, her bravery scares him.  Before long, he’s rescuing her from the one trouble after another that always seems to follow her and social conscience.  Having her stick her nose in on every cause where injustice runs rampant highly annoys Rathe, but when the local night riders starts to target Grace, he rises to champion her cause—an unexpected hero buried under the veils of a jade.

VIOLET FIRE is Brenda Joyce at her most amusing as she takes a comical but no less endearing take on Grace’s desperate struggle to hold on to her old, familiar independence as she crumbles under Rathe’s gentle quest to open her eyes, to show her how to enjoy again the simple, forgotten joys of a life beyond her relentless pursuit of justice and social reform, to appreciate and to celebrate the femininity that she has run away from, and to welcome an unexpected future bright with possibilities of a life with a sensitive, loving man she had never thought she would find.