The Eagle and the Dove is the first book in a new American historical series by Morrow that will span the years between 1850 and Reconstruction. This first installment had some makings of a good read, with kidnappings, rescues, fights, passion, and more, but the writing style and a heavy dose of drama kept it from attaining even an average grade. Unfortunately, I was not able to enjoy this author’s story and will not be picking up the next books in the series.

Jesse McCallum searches for the men who trespassed on his property and murdered his father. A Scot who grew up alongside Native Americans, Jesse’s skills at hunting, tracking, and fighting are well-known through the Colorado territory. When he comes across the four men he has been following for a month, he is enraged to see women imprisoned among them. After dispatching the enemies, Jesse comes face to face with Katherine Dory, an elegant lady who was kidnapped by these miscreants. The other two prisoners are little more than children and have been sorely abused, but Katherine escaped almost untouched because of her family’s money and desire to get her back. Very reluctantly, Jesse agrees to accompany the three females to the nearest trading post, where Katherine hopes to contact her father and fiancé.

Jesse feels attracted to Katherine from the beginning, although he realizes that they are from completely different worlds. She is hot-tempered and snooty, but the rigors of the journey quickly reduce her to her base self. Eventually, the two grow closer and Katherine confides what happened to her when she was kidnapped. Her father is a wealthy investor in the transcontinental railroad and she accompanied him and her fiancé west to survey possible routes. Jesse comes to the conclusion that someone close to her or her father engineered the kidnapping, because the men knew exactly when and from where to take her. Therefore, she could still be in danger. As the journey continues, Jesse protects Katherine and they start to care for one another.

When they reach their destination, everything seems normal: the girls finally get a bath, Jesse is taunted into a fight by a nasty boatman, men drool over Katherine. Then, suddenly Jesse decides that the only way to keep Katherine safe is to marry her. Katherine has no real involvement in the decision and mostly drifts through the ordeal in a haze. But, now she’s married, despite already having a fiancé. Should she fight her attraction to Jesse any longer? Is their marriage just pretend like he said? When her fiancé and father do come to the trading post, what will happen between her and Jesse?

This book had many chances to win me over, containing many plot devices that I enjoy, but the unevenness of the writing and other stylistic issues pulled me away from the story so many times that I just couldn’t get into it. The author uses a lot of flowery, dramatic narrative description, which I have not seen in such excess in a long time. The characters also had the annoying tendency to talk to themselves out loud, and I found inconsistency in certain details. An interesting example involves Katherine’s parents starting with ten children, then eight, and finally they settled with six. That’s a pretty dramatic drop in the number of offspring you’ve produced! The greatest annoyance, however, came from the sudden shifts in either time or intent. One moment you think you know where the story is going and all of a sudden something happens that comes as an illogical shock to the reader, but is not surprising to the characters. They must have had access to some information that I did not.

The characters are a good example of the overdone drama spread throughout the book. I wanted to like Jesse because he was the big, strong protector, but in the end he seemed just as immature as Katherine. They would both make supposedly strong decisions and then immediately change their minds. They act out of spite, and what’s worse, Katherine is a foot-stomper. Jesse kept telling his friend that he was trying to win her love, that he had a plan, but I never saw him try anything. Each got mad over perceived slights and then stayed mad for entirely too long. The list could continue. It was just childish, which is okay to a degree if they grow in the end, but they pulled the same stuff until practically the last page.

The Eagle and the Dove is an overly dramatic, uneven story that I did not enjoy. I found it unfortunate, because had the writing been better and the drama reined in, I could see myself liking the story, for I didn’t have many qualms about the plot. Hopefully, the flow will improve as this series continues, but I won’t be waiting around to see if it does.