Fearless: A Novel of Sarah Bowman

by Lucia St Clair Robson

Overview

Known as the Great Western, six-foot-tall Sarah Bowman was a force of nature. In 1834 she signed on as laundress and cook with General Zachery Taylor's army. In the war with Mexico Sarah became a familiar figure riding through the haze of exploding gunpowder and flames to retrieve the wounded. After she took over for a wounded artilleryman at the siege of Ft. Texas, she was made an honorary member of the Second Artillery. She went on to become what would be, if anyone else were concerned, a tall tale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780990640004
Publisher:	Lucia St. Clair Robson
Publication date:	09/25/2014
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Lucia Robson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in South Florida. She had been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Venezuela and earned her Masters in Library Science at Florida State University. She has written, and had published, nine historical novels.

Editorial Reviews

When you're an imposing flame-haired beauty, standing six feet or better with a heart as big as Texas and a Tennessee wit to match, your life will be filled with adventure. At least if you're Sarah Bowman, the larger-than-life heroine of this dashing western romance from popular novelist Robson (Mary's Land). Basing her protagonist on the historical figure who was dubbed the Great Western by her beloved army boys in the 1840s, Robson creates a lively narrative as Sarah loves and loses men, makes and loses fortunes, saves and succors friends, foils terrorists, all the while mothering (and laundering and cooking for) Zachary Taylor's troops during the Mexican war. Robson's period details are vivid: one can almost feel the hot brass of the cannon and the hunger of the poor Mexicans and smell the Army mules and their drivers. Sarah herself has no mean gift for daily conversation and lyrical expression. With its tough-and-tender Amazon lifted from the history books, this tall tale towers in appeal and skill over most western historicals. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Having triumphed with books like Walk in My Soul (1986), best-selling historical novelist Robson returns with the story of Sarah Borginnis Bowman, who followed her husband to war (the Mexican war, that is) and stayed on to fight after his death.

Library Journal

Robson (Mary's Land, 1995, etc.), who only recently moved to hardcover, continues to turn just-the-facts into highly realistic historical fiction, filled with strongly focused characters and glowing with phosphorescent detail. Beginning in 1845, this tells of the real-life Sarah Borginnis Bowman, a boundlessly spirited six-footer with cayenne hair, whose first husband dies on a boat when a white-hot steam-boiler erupts, blowing the indestructible Jack Borginnis to atoms. Jack had been serving under General Zachary Taylor, and when Taylor's troops in Corpus Christi have been ordered to march on Mexico, which won't give up Texas to the States, Sarah believes herself to be an Army woman, signs on as a laundress and cook, and goes along. As soldiers discover, she's fearless in battle, and at the slaughter at the Rio Grande is seen courageously retrieving the wounded amid exploding gunpowder. She follows Old Zach through battle after battle against Santa Anna, marries a Corporal Davis, and later meets a golden-eyed man who moves with amazing grace, as if to waltz music. After the war, she takes the name of Albert Bowman when they set up house together. More richly detailed historical fiction from an author who writes only what she absolutely wants to—and has a good time doing it.

Kirkus Reviews