Chase the Wind is a long book covering two generations and 22 years. I read it avidly since I love a good long historical saga. After I finished, I wished it could have been the length of Diane Gabaldon’s Outlander or Paullina Simons’ The Bronze Horseman. The story is filled with incidents and characters, many of which remain very sketchy. I can best sum this book up in the phrase “compressed epic.”

Ian Duncan works for the Mason family as a stableman. He is a true genius with horses and has dreams of one day owning a ranch and horses of his own. Ian is in love with Faith Taylor and she returns his love, but her family wants her to marry the Mason heir, Randolph, a cruel and vicious man. Ian and Faith run off together before her wedding to Randolph, who then swears revenge.

Ian and Faith are happy together. They have two children, Jamie and Jenny, and their future looks bright. But Randolph tracks them down, kills Ian and Faith, and leaves Jamie and Jenny orphans. The two children go to an orphanage under the direction of Father Clarence, who takes an immediate dislike to Jenny. However, the kindly Sister Mary Frances takes care of Jamie and Jenny and protects her from Father Clarence.

One day, the orphanage gets a new member, Chase the Wind. Chase is the son of a Kiowa father and a white mother. He and Jamie bond as brothers and he and Jenny become good friends. Father Clarence eventually forces Jenny to go with the Miller family to help with the child Mrs. Miller is carrying. When Chase and Jamie find out, they leave in search of Jenny.

Several years pass, and Chase and Jamie have become workers on a ranch owned by Jason Lynch. They have not been able to find Jenny, but have found friends and family with the Lynches and the other workers on the ranch. One day Jenny comes to the ranch and joyfully reunites with her brother and Chase. As time goes by, Jenny becomes part of the Lynch ranch family and she and Chase realize that they love each other deeply. But Mason Randolph is still out there, and has not finished with the Duncan family.

As you can see, this is an old-fashioned sweeping story. There is a lot, and I mean a lot going on in this book. There are many, many characters and most of them are introduced toward the end of the book when Chase, Jamie, and Jenny settle on the Lynch ranch. Most of the characters in this section show signs of being very interesting, but they don’t have much room to develop. Neither does the romance between Chase and Jenny. The two don’t meet until the middle of the book, are separated for a number of years, then they declare their love. It was all a bit sudden for me, and I kept feeling as though there was lots of story left out of the chapters I read.

A warning: this is a violent book. There are beatings, burnings, torture, rape, murder, and a particularly violent act of revenge. The violence is not dwelt upon, but it is there, and it is sometimes painful to read. Those who are squeamish, be forewarned. Also, the villain, who is a nasty piece of work, does a really stupid thing at the end. To say more would be a spoiler, but his stupidity does have a consequence.

The author’s bio at the end says that Cindy Holby has several other books in the works; Chase the Wind marks her debut. I hope that one of them is Jamie’s story, since we don’t get an HEA closure for him in this book. I also hope that Holby will return to some of the other characters from the Lynch ranch, and that Leisure will give her some more space to tell her story. Despite the sometimes too hurried pace, this is an enthralling book that kept me happily, albeit sometimes uncomfortably, engaged for a good long time and left me wanting more.