Once A Cowboy

ONCE A COWBOY is an engaging story of a man who finds out that he's not who he thinks he is. Alexandra Donovan works with her father as a private investigator, but on occasion, she picks up missing persons cases such as this one. A woman, Helen Braxton, approaches her, asking to help verify the identity of a cowboy she thinks is her missing son, Travis. The resemblance of this man to her husband is uncanny. Alexandra knows that these cases usually do not pan out, and the odds of Brodie Hayes being the woman's missing child was near zero. Despite the odds, Alex agrees to take on the case.

Alex decides that she needs to find a way to get a sample of his DNA without him knowing she's investigating him, not wanting to upset him in case he is not Helen’s son. She manages to get into his house by pretending to need to use his phone while wandering lost in his neighborhood, and voila - she is able to find a comb with a few of his hairs in his bathroom. When the test results come back positive, that Brodie is indeed the son of George and Helen Braxton, Alex is afraid of the reaction she will get from Brodie, especially when he discovers that she's violated his privacy by stealing his comb to do the DNA testing. She is also worried about tearing apart a family despite the fact that Brodie is really someone else’s son.

ONCE A COWBOY deals with Brodie and his need to find himself and his true identity. He also has to deal with a mother, who is not in the best of health, who had lied to him and his now deceased father about the fact that she had taken a baby from another woman. He grapples with this moral dilemma, because despite the fact that all his life he felt he didn’t quite fit in with the family, always trying to please them but failing because he had his own life to lead, he still loved the woman that raised him.

Alex has her own issues to deal with. She has never gotten along with her father, who raised her by himself. She never knew what it was like to have a mother, and wishes she and her father were close. At the very least, she would have liked to be able to get along with him. And while her father disapproves of Alex's methods when it comes to her missing persons cases (she gets too emotionally involved), she goes against his advice once again and falls for Brodie.

This reviewer enjoyed the story about a stolen baby who was raised by parents who were not biologically related to him, and the repercussions it held for all involved once the secret was out. However, the chemistry that supposedly was felt between the two main characters didn’t seem to exist for this reviewer. However, the characters by themselves were interesting and intriguing enough for the reader to want to finish the book. The story line was in a way complex, in that it dealt with both sets of families that were affected, and it made for one interesting book. However, the romance between Alex and Brodie didn’t quite ring true, and it seemed that these two really had no business getting together, nor did it make sense that Brodie would even want to be with a woman who gave him such bad news. ONCE A COWBOY had a great story line about a man’s identity, but the romance was not as credible as this reviewer would have liked it to be.

January 2007