The other thing that turned me off Luther was that as he’s outside fixing the Runabout with Tulsa May watching, Dr. Emma plays the whore role in the story, so you can guess who Tulsa May is. In other words, he’s got a madonna-whore complex. Something different from the females he’s been around.”

“I guess everyone knows that when a fellow with a bit of a past thinks to settle down, he’ll pick a gal that’s sweet and pure. Then Luther explains his attitude towards what he calls “women of tarnished regard”. I’m not a fan of romances where the hero is intimate with a woman other than the heroine, unless there’s a good reason for this involvement. So my first impression of him wasn’t a favorable one. The book opens with Luther waking up next to Emma Dix, the local fallen woman, when Tulsa May arrives needing repairs to her car (the titular Runabout). But it didn’t, for two reasons, and the first of those reasons is Luther.

In every other romance of hers I’ve read, I’ve cared about the characters – ordinary, decent, hard-working people who deserved all the happiness they found – and I expected the magic to work here as well. So it’s a setup I’ve read a thousand times already, but if anyone could make it work, it’s Pamela Morsi. And after being noticed by him causes other young men to pay more attention to Tulsa May, she and Luther can go back to being friends. Since Luther is young, handsome, well-off and just a little scandalous, due to being half Cherokee, people will soon be gossiping about their burgeoning romance instead.

The town buzzes with the news, humiliating her further.īut her friend Luther Briggs comes to the rescue, offering to pretend to court her himself. Foote, only to have the engagement broken when the doctor gets cold feet. Plain, outspoken and unmarried at twenty-four, Tulsa May Bruder doesn’t expect grand romance, but she does hope to have a husband and children. Unfortunately, The Runabout didn’t measure up to my expectations. Pamela Morsi’s Wild Oats was a delightful read that put a fun twist on the trope of a woman being delivered an indecent proposal, so I was eager to try the second book in the author’s Territory Trysts series.

Runabout by Pamela Morsi