GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES—A Fabulous Read

Parris Afton Bonds’ GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES — Ohhh, how to describe this book I adored? Let me count the ways I felt the love.

I was plunged back into the late 1930s and traveled from Nazi Germany to the Texas hill country and back again. I went to the Grand Old Opry, a beer garden, and a concentration camp. I meandered a river, rode in a busted old pick up, and squeezed onto a gypsy varda (traveling house). I tasted gypsy stew and feasted on the presence of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Yup, he’s in the book too. I heard fresh, new voices from a complex controlled lawyer to a wild Irish lass to a delicious Western rancher.

With Bonds' incredible skill, it all worked beautifully in a book I couldn’t put down from start to finish.

Better than a movie—the clothes, the settings, the voices enveloped me in a time before cell phones and TVs, at the close of the Depression and the dawn of WWII.

Ah, the romance—it felt real, it was delicious, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Irish Romany, Romy’s, desperate bid for freedom takes her around the world and into the unwilling to arms of Duke, who is desperately trying to keep his Texas cattle ranch afloat. I rooted for her like crazy, even though her survival practices were at at times, er, questionable. She's hilarious, crafty, smart, and deeply wounded. Romi definitely does not complement Duke's taciturn nature. His rough past informs his current desperate desire for order and structure. Romy is anything but. And yet…

You’ll have to read the book to find out how everything comes together in a seamless and beautiful artistry of words and love. I hated reading the last page and ending my time with Romy and Duke, as well as the marvelous ranch hands, and all the other characters populating this vibrant and stunning romance. Not to be missed!