TEXAS! CHASE

by Sandra Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1990

The second in a trilogy of Lone Star melodramas (after Texas! Lucky--not reviewed) featuring the off-rich Tyler family--this time scrambling to survive the oil bust of the 1980's. Paralyzed by grief when his pregnant wife is killed in a car accident while househunting with Marcie Johns, a local real-estate agent, Chase Tyler does what any good Texas oil man would do--he drowns his sorrows in whiskey, honky-tonks, and buxom blondes. Because virile young Chase's grief is particularly great, he also feels obliged to hook up with a rodeo, where he is soon trampled by a bull and shipped off to a hospital bed. Marcie Johns, who happens to have been in the rodeo audience when Chase was hurt, and who happens to have been in love with Chase since the two were teenagers, gallantly pays his hospital bill and returns this mere shell of a Texan to the welcoming arms of the Tyler clan. Just in time, too. Brother Lucky, sister Sage, and mother Laurie hope Chase will be able to revive Tyler Drilling before it goes belly-up in the current oil bust. Though Chase does his best, failure looms--until Marcie offers to invest her considerable savings in the company if Chase will marry her. (After all, she reasons, marrying the man she loves in name only is better than not having him at all. Besides, Marcie is 35 and single, and people are starting to talk.) Chase reluctantly agrees to the arrangement, thus dooming the reader to an endless series of marital spats, fumbled bedroom encounters, and romantic misunderstandings before the bride and groom fall predictably into one another's arms. ""I like your. . .your thing,"" Chase says early on, gesturing at Marcie's peignoir. Hardly the stuff of romantic! fantasy.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1990

ISBN: 0739377558

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1990

Categories: FICTION