About In Bear Country II: The Barbary Coast
by Kiernan Kelly
146 pages / 59000
ISBN: 978-1-60370-008-5, 1-60370-008-0
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, paperback
Bear and Pride are leaving their home in the mountains, at least for a little while. Pride dreams of visiting the Pacific Ocean, so they're off to the Barbary Coast, ready to see San Francisco. While taking on provisions in Denver, they meet a man named Beckett who asks them to go on something of a quest while they're on their trip. He wants their help to find a missing young man named Jackson Dower.
The two men decide to look for Jackson, but they have no idea what they've taken on by agreeing to do the job. There's a lot more to Jackson than meets the eye, and Bear and Pride are in for more than a few surprises. Their search will take them across the prairie and the desert, to the most infamous city in the country.
Danger lurks around every corner for Pride and Bear. The past catches up to them, Jackson poses more problems than they really wanted to take on, and Pride ends up wondering if he'll ever be able to see that ocean he's dreamed of for so long. Their journey will test their mettle, and their love. Can Bear and Pride survive their adventure? Find out in Kiernan Kelly's sequel to In Bear Country!
Review
Mel Spenser, author of Miss Me?, writes:
Bear and Pride are back in the sequel to Bear Country.
The story starts out in 1868 Denver, as the two are getting ready to head out to San Francisco. While in Denver, a lawyer approaches them asking that they locate a man, named Jackson Dower, believed to have gone to San Francisco.
It quickly becomes evident to the reader that the lawyer is up to no good. He has sent them into a situation in what he believes will be the end of Bear, Pride and Jackson; thereby clearing the way for him to take over the silver mine that Jackson has inherited.
The dangers of traveling in that era become all too clear as their journey progresses from Denver to San Francisco. Several perilous things happen to them; but there are some nice surprises along the way, too. Through it all, however, they remain devoted to each other.
Once in San Francisco, they meet up with Jackson. We find out that Jackson left home after his parents were murdered, and had been hiding out. He’d had a rough go of it since arriving, and had gotten involved with some bad men operating opium dens, and shanghaiing people for the slave trade. When Bear and Pride find Jackson, he is penniless and filthy; yet they take him in and help him.
The relationship between Bear and Pride is engaging. And the ménage scenes between the three are quite hot, but do not detract from the central relationship between Bear and Pride.
Kelly’s body of work show a prolific writer, and the historical aspects of this book provide a refreshingly different backdrop. This is a very well written story, and the descriptions of San Francisco in the late 1860’s put the reader immediately into the era. There are several villains in this story, and they are truly sinister.
Bear and Pride are quite likable, and their chemistry together is great. I would like to see a follow-up telling the continuation of Jackson’s story.
Sample
Denver, Colorado
August 30, 1868
"Land sakes, Pride! I’m not cut out to be all dressed up in a suit like this here. I feel like I’m fixing to get hitched – or buried," Bear complained, tugging at the starched collar of the brand-new brown wool suit Pride had insisted he buy.
As big as he was, Bear found few choices in the ready-made garments available for purchase at the mercantile. He’d bought the largest size they had, and yet the coat was still tight across his shoulders, the sleeves showed his wrist bones, and the pants cut him at the crotch. It also itched like the dickens, and Bear was ready to tear off the suit and the narrow necktie that strangled his throat and grind them under the heel of his boots.
He was a little partial to his new hat, though, he admitted. Made by a fella named Stetson, or so the man that ran the Denver General Mercantile had told them. It was black and broad-brimmed, and as stiff as a board. It wasn’t as warm as the coonskin cap he had stuffed into his saddlebag, but the wide brim kept the sun out of his eyes. It was made sturdy, and should last Bear a good, long time, he reckoned. It was worth every penny of the five dollars he’d paid for it - unlike the suit, which he thought was a waste since he did not intend to wear it again in his lifetime.
"Oh, quit your bellyaching! You only have to wear it until the man finishes taking the daguerreotype," Pride said. Bear noticed that Pride had a finger stuck down inside the collar of his shirt, digging it around a bit as if trying to loosen the death grip of his collar, same as Bear. It gave Bear a small feeling of satisfaction to know that Pride was as least as uncomfortable as him, considering that this had been all Pride’s idea in the first place.
They’d taken baths at the hotel, both paying an extra nickel for clean water, and had been to the barber, too. Got haircuts and shaves, and splashed with cologne that burned like the fires of Hades and smelled like wet hay.
All because Pride wanted a new-fangled daguerreotype taken of the two of them. A remembrance, he’d called it. They were family, Pride insisted, and families had daguerreotypes on their mantels. He wanted to put it in a fancy silver frame and hang it over the fireplace back in the cabin when they returned to the foothills over St. Elmo.
Bear was disinclined to say no to Pride. Besides, he’d learned that going against Pride when he got an idea stuck in his head was a little like trying to stand against a twister. You were going to get sucked up and carried along or you were going to get plowed under, but either way you were going to lose.
"Messieurs, kindly compose yourselves. I am ready to begin." The man who stood behind the camera contraption stuck his head out from under the cloth that covered it, glaring at them. He had a thick black walrus mustache that had been carefully oiled into two tightly curling, pointy ends, a pair of wire-frame spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, and a thick French accent.