The Dumont Brand

Two Brothers; Two Stories

Romance - Historical
69 Pages
Reviewed on 09/24/2015
Buy on Amazon

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Author Biography

Descended from a long line of Texas ranchers, preachers, and teachers on one side and Kentucky horse thieves and moonshiners on the other, award-winning author Kathleen Rice Adams had no choice but to become an outlaw. For the past thirty years, she’s stayed two steps ahead of a lynch mob as an award-winning news writer, editor, and columnist.

When she’s not chasing the news, she commits crimes against fiction. Her short story “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” won Western Fictioneers’ Peacemaker Award for Best Western Short Fiction 2014; her debut novel, PRODIGAL GUN, is the only novel-length western historical romance ever to be nominated for a Peacemaker.

Visit her hideout on the web at KathleenRiceAdams.com.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Tina Gibbons for Readers' Favorite

The Dumont Brand by Kathleen Rice Adams combines two short stories about the Collier family of Texas before and after the Civil War. In The Big Uneasy, Patriarch Edson Collier has arranged a marriage between his eldest son, Bennett, and Josephine Lapierre, a southern belle of New Orleans. Edson is ill and wants to see Bennett settled and producing heirs before he passes away. Josephine is willing to travel to Texas and marry a man she doesn't know; she's fleeing from her own past. When she arrives, Edson's younger son, Amon, escorts her to the Collier home. She finds herself falling for her intended's brother. The Collier family has skeletons in their closets and Bennett has political aspirations. When he returns home to marry Josephine and the bones come crashing out of their hiding places, it's too much for him and he stalks off, cursing his family and vowing never to set foot on the property again. It leaves Josephine and Amon free to marry. When we meet Bennett again in Making Peace, he has been ravaged by war as a Confederate soldier. He returns to the Collier place, and finds Maggie Fannin squatting on a piece of their land. He regrets his actions toward his family before the war, and he's taken with Maggie.

Kathleen Rice Adams told Edson's story cleverly and with emotion. His deep affection for Jenny, a woman of color, was obvious. It was not merely a sexual convenience, it was an affair of the heart. In the time frame of the story that made him a strong man. The relationships between the Collier men were layered and complicated. It teetered so that I couldn't decide if it was love or hate. Loyalty was a constant. In the first story I was drawn to Amon and liked his character. It was difficult to like Bennett, even though there were reasons for his behavior. The second story put a new perspective on Bennett and compelled me to forgive him for his previous actions. The romance between Amon and Josephine was light and sweet, but Maggie and Bennett were sizzling and intense. The two stories were a perfect combination and complemented each other well. I highly enjoyed The Dumont Brand and recommend Kathleen Rice Adams.