So there I was on the plane, presumably a macho gun guy, reading what was obviously a romance novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, no one cared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If someone had <\/em>commented, I would have answered, \u201cExcuse me? I\u2019m reading historical fiction,<\/em> thank you very much!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book was \u201c16 Brides\u201d by Stephanie Grace Whitson. She is married to my friend Dan Higgins, with whom I had just spent five days at Nebraska Shooters teaching a MAG-40 class on judicious use of defensive deadly force and \u201ccombat handgun\u201d shooting.\u00a0 Dan has an extensive background teaching hand-to-hand as well as armed force in the law enforcement\/corrections sector, and \u201chistorical fiction\u201d is how he described his wife\u2019s twenty-some novels.\u00a0 I think he got it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephanie Grace Whitson lives in Nebraska, where \u201c16 Brides\u201d is set, but travels all over doing intensive historical archive research for background.\u00a0 This particular book details the actual phenomenon of post-Civil War widows traveling to the Midwest to meet single male immigrants who had come to the United States to take advantage of free homestead land.\u00a0 While there was indeed a \u201cmail order bride\u201d sort of thing going on, the land give-away also attracted a number of lone women ready to make their way by themselves in what was definitely a \u201cman\u2019s world\u201d at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The characterizations and construction of relationships are well done, and are not in the \u201cbodice-ripper\u201d genre.\u00a0 The plotline finds multiple cases of women using guns as equalizers against aggressive males, and true to her reputation for painstaking research Ms. Whitson gets the gun stuff right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n