Friday, February 1, 2008

To Wed a Texan-Georgina Gentry

To Wed a Texan
Georgina Gentry
Zebra, Mar 2008, $6.99
ISBN: 9780821779910

In 1895 Dallas, Jack "Cash" McCalley is hosting a prizefight. Widow Mrs. Bonnie O'Neal Schwartz Purdy, president of the Lone Star Ladies for Decency and Decorum, is hosting a convention. They meet over who will occupy his suite at the Cattleman’s Hotel. When she learns of his plan to bring a fight to town, Bonnie becomes upset as she opposes such brutality. She arranges for her group and several preachers to protest the violent confrontation in which she has the law on her side as Texas has banned boxing; the women and the religious leaders demand the city leaders enforce the law and stop the fight from occurring.

Not one to buck such a trend, Cash decides to relocate the fight, but somehow each site he picks, Bonnie is there although he is not sure how she knows. He decides retreating for another day has failed so he goes on the offensive. He plans on seducing his opponent, not realizing the gender fight he has begun.

In the prologue Georgina Gentry explains this superb historical gender war is based on a true occurrence in which a Texas promoter tried to bring the Fitzsimmons-Corbett heavyweight championship bout to the Lone Star State. The unlimited rounds mixed gender championship is between Cash and the Widow-president is an amusing terrific Gay Nineties romance populated by real people who were part of the original media circus.

Harriet Klausner

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