Buffalo Summer

BUFFALO SUMMER by Nadia Nichols (A Harlequin Superromance)A young woman and "her" five boys spend a summer on a buffalo ranch in BUFFALO SUMMER, a Harlequin Superromance by Nadia Nichols. Caleb McCutcheon is a retired baseball player. He would have been nominated into the Baseball Hall of Fame, if it hadn't been for an injury that cut his career short. Caleb has time to kill, and decides to invest his money (which he has plenty of) in an old ranch that was part of Indian-owned land in the Montana wilderness. Enter Pony Young Bear. Born and raised on the reservations, she had gone away to college with the financial help of her lawyer brother Steve, and is now a teacher on the reservations. She also takes in troubled children, who have nowhere to go because of varying hardships. This year, Pony has five young boys, all of whom live with her while she teaches them their lessons every day. When she finds out that she needs extra cash to buy school supplies in the fall, she is desperate to find decent work to help earn that money. Word gets around that Caleb needs help on his new ranch, and Pony has experience with herding Buffalo. She proposes that she and her five boys work the ranch for the entire summer, giving the boys some experience and responsibilities, and at the same time allowing her to earn the money needed for the fall school semester.Caleb, however, does not know that Pony is a woman. He is in shock when he first sets eyes on her, and does not really believe she can do the job. But Pete, an old friend of Pony and Steve, convinces Caleb that Pony is his "man". She brings along her five boys, and their adventures begin.As Pony teaches Caleb the ins and outs of raising and herding buffalo, Caleb finds himself falling in love with her. However, after a long talk about culture differences and how Pony feels that her Indian tribe is slowly becoming extinct due to intermarriages, Caleb is crushed. How does one deal with issues of racial pride and intermarriages, when a man is desperately in love with a woman who believes in it? I always enjoy a romance with an unusual backdrop, and BUFFALO SUMMER fits the description. Nadia Nichols does a good job of describing the beauty of the Montana wilderness, and learning about buffalo was a new one on me! The story was well told and believable. Thumbs up for BUFFALO SUMMER.