Romance at Heart Magazine: review of Walk Into The Flame by Ronda Thompson

Title: Walk Into The Flame
Author: Ronda Thompson

Published in June 2003 by Dorchester's Leisure Books
Genre: Historical
IBSN: 0-8439-5119-2

Related Books: Cougar's Woman

She had grown strong, and even more beautiful in her five years away from the People, but the memories remained of a life much different than what Silent Wind saw here, and now. The Mescaleros had suffered terribly at the hands of the white soldiers, and The People were only a remnant of what they once were. She is shocked and horrified by the conditions she finds them in, and also by the attitude that is held by the fort's commander, Captain Franklin Peterson. She has come to do what she can for the tribe that raised her and her brother, but soon realizes that her long absence has been taken as her abandonment. No word, no visit in the long years has led to some hard feelings. The hatred that she apparently feels coming from the one person she wants to help, shakes her to her foundations.

She knows that Swift Buck has become a proud warrior, and she is relieved to find him alive, but all is not well. The plight of her tribe hits home hardest as she sees her adoptive mother, Laughing Stream and her granddaughter of three summers. He has a daughter, Amoke, and all of a sudden, Rachel is feeling hurt, betrayed, and very jealous. The fact that his marriage to another might have been spurred by her absence never enters her mind, and only a twinge of guilt enters for her own possible part in the sequence of events. After all, she is not Apache, and he never declared his feelings for her. There was a time when she would gladly shared his robes, been his mate, his wife. Now, it was too late, Swift Buck is married, and his family on the reservation. Rachel can only think that this is the end until she learns the truth, and is taken captive by Swift Buck in a desperate bid for freedom, and together they flee from the pursuit of the Captain and his troops...

Swift Buck is an angry young man, and that is putting it mildly. He has been forced into a very bad situation, had his horses, his weapons, and his independent life cruelly snatched from him, and that is only the beginning. He has also been taken from the freedom of the green and fertile mountains he called home, and given a patch of land that will support no life, let alone the game and food his family and tribe need to survive. Anger only scratches the surface of what he feels when it comes to the treatment they have experienced at the hands of the white soldiers. Then to be faced with the woman that abandoned him, specially when she knew of his feelings, was the last straw, the final slap in the face. The fact she shows up, and the longing, the feelings that he had not told her about return to haunt him, does not endear her to him. She is now white in his eyes.

Freedom, and the band of renegades that escaped the forced move to the reservation is his only hope, and in a desperate attempt to gain this freedom, Swift Buck snatches Rachel, then takes his mother, Laughing Stream, and his daughter, Amoke, and flees to the mountains and what he hopes will be the remnants of their free kindred. He wants Amoke to be raised in the style and traditions of her forefathers, learning the traditions and customs by which they have survived for centuries. She cannot do that on the reservation, and he cannot provide for her there either. Without his weapons, he cannot protect her, or provide food for her, and without a horse, he cannot travel the needed distances to hunt, and without the freedom to do so, she may die. She is his life, and he will take Amoke away, even if it necessitates taking the white woman, Rachel hostage. The white woman, he can no longer think of her as Silent Wind, the one he once loved.

The Apaches claim that truly loving someone is like walking into the flame, for you burn with love, lust, and desire. That is the premise, and the title of Ronda Thompson's newest release. Walk Into The Flame is about an Apache brave named Swift Buck, and the woman who was adopted by his mother and father..a white girl. They called her Silent Wind, and Swift Buck loved her with all his heart. But her brother, Cougar, finally came for her, and took her back to the white world. *his story is Cougar's Woman, he too was adopted by the Mescalero Apaches* Swift Buck resents that he has not heard from, nor seen Silent Wind for many years, and is forced, by the passage of time and by family, to marry a woman he does not love. By the time Silent Wind returns, she is once again wearing the white woman's clothing and her white name, Rachel Morgan, and Swift Buck makes no secret of the animosity that he now holds for her.

Walk Into The Flame is the story of how they find each other.. the trials they go through, and how he claims her as captive, but in reality, it is she who holds him in the palm of her hand! Ronda has once again beguiled us with a truly beautiful story that transcends the brutal and harsh reality of the times. Set against the background of the internment of the Apache on reservations, it is a story of desperation, deceit, and the transcendent love of Rachel and Swift Buck, and the choices they had to make to survive together. The devastation of the tribes of the southwest, was due to the settlement of the whites, and Ronda gives us a brutal but genuine look into the shameful history of the region as well, which frames the situations faced by our intrepid pair of lovers beautifully. Walk Into The Flame is a true masterpiece, and a five star read in any language. It is a June release from Dorchester, and is in your stores now.

Yours in good reading,

Rose!

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