Rose

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AUG 29, 1990

Stock characters and the faltering of its antiracist stance help to keep this western/romance about an Italian woman and a half-Sioux man firmly in the ranks of the ordinary. In 1887, Rosa Audi journeys from her Italian village to Busted Heel, Wyo., to find that she is now a widow: her husband, who had emigrated first to make a home for her, has been killed recently by stray gunfire. Kase Storm, the half Sioux-half Dutch town marshal, decides this is no place for a beautiful, unprotected woman and sends her packing. However, encouraged by the town's stereotypically kind-hearted madam, Rosa stays to establish a restaurant. As Kase struggles to reconcile himself to the past he has fled, he resists his growing attraction to Rosa, unwilling to have her subjected to the racist slurs he suffers as a ``half-breed.'' But Rosa, who proves her mettle by surviving on her own and winning the hearts of the townspeople, refuses to be swayed by such prejudice. Curiously, Landis's ( Wildflower ) antiracism finally turns selective: when outlaws take a train (and Rosa) hostage, all the men turn out to help--except the town's one Chinese.