Review: Blind Tiger

Sandra Brown has been published for over forty years, and that kind of longevity, plus it being the early 1980s, it stands to reason she did publish some historical romance back in the day. But it wasn't many, and it wasn't until her 2009 release, Rainwater, that I took notice of her ability to write historical settings. My enjoyment of that book (I'll be blunt, it's a tearjerker that wrecked me) and the premise of Blind Tiger, led me to downloading the ARC, where it's been languishing on my Kindle since 2021. Y'all, I could just kick myself in the teeth for not reading it sooner. I have some minor quibbles (hello, me) but this book was a 500+ page ride I did not want to get off of.

Content Warnings: Infant death due to illness, suicide, on-page (and brutal) sexual assault of secondary character.

Laurel Plummer grew up in a house with a disapproving father and too many mouths to feed, so when she saw her chance to escape, she took it by marrying Derby Plummer, a charming young man her parents immediately disapproved of. They married, her parents disowned her, and shortly thereafter Derby was drafted to fight in World War I. The war is now over and Derby is home, but a changed man. Never mind that Prohibition has made alcohol illegal, Derby is drunk more often than not and can't hold down a job, leaving Laurel and their baby, Pearl, in a very precarious situation. But things might be looking up. Derby says his father has gotten him a job back in his hometown of Foley, Texas, they just need to get their ramshackle Model T the 150 miles there. They do eventually make it, only for Laurel to realize that Irv has no clue that 1) his son was coming 2) that he had wife and 3) that he was a grandfather. They're not at Irv's shack very long before Derby decides to put a gun to his head and commit suicide.

With no place to go, and Irv being a decent sort, she and Pearl settle in to life in the shack outside of Foley. Then, one day, a stranger shows up. Thatcher Hutton hopped in a railcar looking to get back to the ranch he was working at in the Panhandle before he was sent off to war. He didn't plan of running afoul of the hobos he fleeced (fair and square!) in a poker game. He fights his way out of that scrape by throwing some punches and jumping from the moving train. He comes across Laurel as he's hoofing it into town, which is where his real trouble begins.

Foley is a small town, and even with oil fields sprouting up all over the countryside, strangers are immediately cast with a suspicious eye. So when the town doctor's wife vanishes without a trace, Thatcher is immediately suspected. A nosy neighbor saw the woman feeding him shortbread earlier that day and nobody buys his story that he was there because he saw an advertisement for a room for rent. The local sheriff eventually realizes that he's got nothing to hold Thatcher on (no matter how much the town mayor and the doctor are blatting) and he takes a shine to him. He reminds him of his son who died in the war. He also recognizes that the cowboy is observant, smart and would make a hell of a lawman. There's a storm brewing in Foley in the form of rival moonshiners and the sheriff, with crooks all around can use all the help he can get. 

Eventually what happens is that Thatcher finds himself with no place to go, so he stays in Foley until something better comes along.  Laurel recognizes that she can't raise a baby in a rickety shack, and convinces Irv they move to town and discovers that her father-in-law has a tidy, yet small, moonshine business on the side. When baby Pearl succumbs to pneumonia, our heroine is officially all out of f*cks. If Irv is going to support them illegally, he might as well make some real money. Laurel is soon the brains of the operation, but her business soon gathers attention from all the wrong sorts of people.

The best way to describe this book is historical fiction with romantic elements and a slow burn suspense plot. The romance here is obviously Thatcher and Laurel but it's never the engine driving the story and honestly one of the weaker aspects.  It's a mix of Insta-Lust with some adversarial mistrust thrown in on the side. Laurel is up to her pretty little eyeballs in the mess, Thatcher knows this, it's just piecing the whole thing together. 

This book clocks in at over 500 pages and it takes a while for the suspense to cook.  The missing doctor's wife comes into play fairly quickly, but the moonshine business simmers a bit longer.  Brown uses this time on world-building and it's all dynamite. I could feel the Texas heat and smell the dust before long. There's a wide cast of secondary characters but I had no problem keeping track of who was who because they all serve their purpose, and serve it well. This slow burn also builds up the tension as greed bubbles over into violence.

The older I get the more I've come to realize that what I want in my fiction reading is to get lost in a book. I want to be transported. Escapism is maybe part of that, but mostly I just want to be in the hands of a good storyteller and y'all, this story hooked me but good. It's not a story that will work for some readers, Pearl's death, while not violent, is very sad. There's a particularly brutal sexual assault of a secondary character once the suspense heats up, and Laurel is a very prickly sort of heroine. Justifiably prickly in my opinion but I can see some readers dinging this because they "don't like her." Well, she's not always likable. 

However, I wasn't necessarily reading this for the romance. Once the world-building sunk it's claws into me Brown could have taken this story in any multitude of directions and I would have been happy to be led around on a leash.  Am I happy that Laurel and Thatcher get their happy ending? Well, of course, I'm not a monster. But it was the historical fiction wrapped up with a saga-like bow featuring a compelling suspense plot where Prohibition has even normally law-abiding citizens happily and willingly breaking the law that hooked me. Here's hoping Brown keeps cooking up more historical fiction.

Final Grade = A-