The Chili Queen

The Chili Queen by Sandra Dallas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved this book! It was engaging all the way through with a real twist at the end.. This is Sandra Dallas at her best. The characters seem alive with all their quirks and inconsistencies. At the end it is just pure fun. I also resonated with the names. I have relatives who are from What Cheer, Iowa and an Aunt Addie who lived here...hmmm and she was born in Jasper County! I felt like Sandra Dallas had looked at my genealogy;>)I have always been fascinated with the name. No one is exactly sure how it came to be called that for sure, but the stories are interesting.

The story is about a Madam, Addie French, who meets a plain, spinster woman, Emma Roby, a mail order bride, on the train. When the husband to be doesn't like what he sees, Emma ends up going to the "boarding house" of the only woman she knows...Addie. The woman is pitifully naive, but ends up getting in on a scheme with the bank robber boyfriend of Addie and proves that she is not as helpless as she appears. Along with that there is a scheme to defraud Emma's greedy brother of the portion of their inheritance that is rightfully hers. Everything is in place when the bank is robbed, the brother arrives, the swindle is on its way to fruition and then the fun begins. The reader looks at the number of pages left in the book and can only wonder what is going to fill all those pages. This is where the book ceases to be ordinary and is Sandra Dallas at her best. I thoroughly enjoyed this twisting and turning plot.

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