Blog Tour: A Promise for Breanna

Breanna Baylor is a competent, certified medical nurse who serves as a doctor in post-civil war western towns devoid of other medical professionals. Amazingly, she can remove a bullet from a man’s abdomen, perform a caesarean section delivery, and have her patients live to tell about it. As courageous as any man, she can step behind an outlaw holding a young captive and force him to surrender. She makes each shot count in a gun battle against Redclaw and his Snake Warriors. And she always has ready at her fingertips a Scripture verse or pertinent trivia point from the book “A World History of Medicine.” She is also an amazing evangelist who routinely leads people to Christ. In this tale, Breanna’s former fiancé (a smooth-talking, crooked gambler) appears with his new wife, seeking to avoid detection by U.S. Marshalls who are hunting him for murder. Breanna is shown as a very different person between her pre-salvation life where she is engaged to a gambler, to her pure heroine status after she is saved. Breanna’s heart is now given to legendary hero John Stranger, who flits like a ghost in the background of the story. While very accurate in portraying wagon trains, the book is politically incorrect in its honest portrayal of warring Indians. The real dangers of Indian attack, fast-moving river currents, and sickness show up frequently. Author Al Lacy has written more than 100 historical and Western novels, so his volume is peppered with facts from his research on west-bound wagon trains. I’m not really sure who is the intended audience for this story, or how one would classify the novel (romance? Historic fiction?). I read this book in 1995 when it first was released as the start of the “Angle of Mercy” series. This volume has now been reprinted. Breanna’s story continues in nine more volumes.