To Tame a Texan

April 15, 2003
Lynnie McBride, schoolteacher and suffragette, is desperate to get to Dodge City, Kansas, for a big women's rights meeting. Her travel options limited, she dresses as a teenage boy so she can go on a trail drive lead by Texas bad boy, Ace Durango. Ever since Ace's family forced him to take Lynnie to the Governor's Ball, which she turned into a free-for-all demonstration for women's suffrage, he's avoided her like the plague. Lynnie doesn't care too much for Ace, either, but as they work their way through the many dangers of the Chisholm Trail, they develop a grudging respect for each other, which turns into something deeper. Ace's excruciating conversion from a card-carrying chauvinist to a man reluctantly acknowledging female equality is priceless, and a fine cast of secondary characters fills the pages, including Ace's matchmaking family; the men on the cattle drive who accept the courageous, hard-working Lynnie long before Ace does; and a cross-eyed, beribboned calf named Daisy Buttercup. Gentry's classic tale of the unending battle of the sexes is a hoot.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)