Cassidy's Courtship cover, Cassidy's Courtship

Cassidy's Courtship

Sharon Mignerey

Attorney Cole Cassidy and cleaning lady Brenna James meet in the least promising of circumstances, as he's the one who sees to it that she gets hosed in a settlement over building violations and a rubber check. He feels badly about her situation, and manages to keep her from signing a document admitting to deliberate intention to commit fraud. But she's still thousands in debt, her promising little cleaning business destroyed.

Needless to say, she's less than thrilled to encounter him again when he shows up at the sports bar where she's taken a second job waiting tables. But he's since quit his high-powered law firm, and his current defendent is one of her regular customers, she's a little more willing to cut him some slack. And...she likes him. He really is a winsome character, and he makes his attraction to her immediately obvious. But he's well to do, and she isn't; he's highly educated, and she isn't; he's got a happy relationship with all of his folks, and she doesn't.

Ultimately, James's problems stem from a difficult relationship with her military father, who is proud of his elder son's achievements, but has little use for his daughter, and those scars have consequently limited her options---romantically, as well as career wise---severely. Such favoritism would hardly need justification in a historical novel, but this book is set contemporaneously (or relatively so---one of the characters traveled in a wagon train as a child---and since the father/daughter relationship is so important it would have been nice to have explored the origin of Colonel James's antipathy. Despite it, she's picked up determination and grace under pressure from her sire.

Mignerey does explicate their history well, however. Somewhat less comprehensible is the relationship between Brenna James and her brother Michael, who has easy access to the resources Brenna desparately needs to improve her life. They appear to be on friendly terms; he and his wife are happy to exchange room and board for her babysitting services, and he can't but help being aware of her difficulties. Why, then, doesn't he encourage (or even positively nag) her? Granted, Brenna will accept no help from her father, but since she and her brother never have the kind of arguments over his offering---for example---to assist her over the dismal quality of her legal representation, this aspect of their relationship doesn't make sense, except as a plot device. And a good, knockdown fight between them, (or even a reference to past such altercations) with her refusing to accept anymore than room and board, would have gone a long way to make sense of the situation.

Both protagonists are fond of farms, and some of the detail with regard to farm life---snapping and de-stringing string beans (another indication that perhaps the book is set slightly in the past---beans are nearly stringless now, if my burpee catalog is to be believed)---such as crocheted doileys and handmade afghans was appealing, though it left me hungry for more. Sharp details, (such as the ones missing from a description of day sailing) add real depth to a story. The author mentions pulling a sail out of its bag, and so then I expected to read about the ripping sound as it's hauled up the slot in the mast; the awkwardness attendant upon launching a boat without a dock; the whoosh of the waves and the slap of the water against the haul---all sounds I intensely associate with the peacefulness of sailing, and they simply weren't there.

I perhaps got the best sense of those details with regard to the drunk driving case Cassidy is researching when he encounters Brenna again, the progress of which parallels his relationship with Brenna. (As with the origin of Brenna's father's antipathy to her, I didn't feel I was getting the complete implacation, but I do feel there was enough there that the author was attempting to draw connections) I sniffled my way through sections all through the novel, and if at times I didn't feel that Mignerey had quite pulled all the pieces and motivations together, still, I have the sense this will very probably come in time. (And, I hope, more variation in her prose, which tends towards the choppy side.) In the meantime, an entertaining read, with an intriguing premise for the likeable protagonists' romantic difficulties. Three stars.

Sylvus Tarn

Last modified: Sun Sep 13 00:53:50 EDT 1998

Sylvus Tarn