Viva, Rose!

Rose, daughter of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, lives in Texas just north of the border.  She misses her adult brother Abraham who, according to last report, has gone to Mexico to join Pancho Villa’s forces in the Mexican Revolution.  Captured during an attempt to send Abe a letter, Rose is taken to Villa’s hideout where she is forced to serve as playmate to bratty Dorotea.

 

There’s a lot of reading adventure as spirited Rose deals with Dorotea’s whims and attempts to keep kosher in a pork-loving community.  Meanwhile, she mingles with the eclectic members of Villa’s entourage, which includes a barnstormer pilot, a fearless female buckaroo, and journalist John Reed. Rose learns that the Mexican Revolution is not a black-and-white affair, and that Villa and his men are not simply a gang of bandits.

 

This book joins such feisty frontier girl stories as Boston Jane, One Came Home, and The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming.