GRR Reviews The Blacksmith's Mail Order Bride by Cindy Caldwell

The Blacksmith's Mail Order Bride has a good twist or two, but the evil-doer was obvious, and the solution didn't quite have enough action.

Olivia Blanchard had been helping her father do hog ranching for all her life. Her father had passed on, and all that's left was an old ranchhand and her. The only annoyance was a man who kept wanting her to sell out. With all the hogs are slaughtered and bacon is in the smokehouse, she's ready to sell the stock to the mercantile in town and get ready for the winter. She came back from town to find her smokehouse burned down, and the fire spread to her cabin. She lost nearly everything she owned. Only her few friends in town kept her going. Elsewhere in town, Joe Stanton, the town blacksmith, has been under increasing pressure to marry the vacuous girl his mother and aunt picked out for him. He can't leave, as blacksmithing was a business from his father. He was contemplating a mail-order bride when he heard about Olivia's misfortune. Why get a mail order bride when there's a perfect single woman here? So they get hitched. But Joe's mother was angry and determined to break up the marriage, while Joe's determined to solve Olivia's misfortune as he was sure it wasn't an accident, and indeed, there was NO BACON in the burned remains of the smokehouse...

The marriage was a bit forced, but the circumstances made sense and wasn't that different from other mail order bride stories. The guilty party was obvious, and how they were caught was mostly tell, not show. That's why this wasn't a 5/5.


Category: Historical Western

Primary Plot: Woman who just lost her cabin and her family business was forced to marry the blacksmith in town; but does he love her?

Tropes: woman in peril, protector, mail order bride, fish out of water, conspiracy

Overall Rating:  4/5