It's been a long time since there's been such a plain-and-simple, head-over-heels love story as this one. It's about a good girl who falls so in love with a bad boy that she forsakes everything to ride with him - outlaw and fugitive that he is. Lily DeLony, fifteen, tells her very one-sided version of what happened on Christmas Eve night 1883 in the town of McDade, Texas, when a vigilante group made up of ordinary citizens struck against a gang of outlaws. One of the outlaw gang was the love of Lily's young life. One of the vigilantes was her father. The DeLony family is churchgoing, God-fearing, hardworking, controlled. The father's word is law and is seldom, spoken softly. But Lily was raised to meet the challenge of hard work. She's a strong, upright girl who knows the rules of virtue and righteousness. And follows them. Follows them, that is, until she meets Marion "Shot" Beatty, youngest of the Beatty brothers. By the end of the story, Lily has forsaken all that for the love of Shot Beatty and a unknown future - one that includes a pistol in Lily's skirt pocket. Lily's telling of this tale is characterized by her spirit, her will, her fearlessness, and the endearing gullibility of youth. Utterly convincing, utterly beguiling, Lily introduces a wonderful new writer with an ear for a certain kind of voice not heard so clearly since Charles Portis's True Grit. YA-- In the small Texas town of McDade, young girls are expected to help with farm work, cook for the family, watch the children, and stay away from disreputable men. But wham, bam, boom! Lily DeLony, oldest child of a widowed father, falls smack-dab, head-over-heels in love with Marion Beatty, of the notorious Beatty brothers, ignoring the very suitable, but very boring, college student Daniel O'Barr. Texas of 1883 is reenacted in this first novel, from scenes of hardworking, church-going families who labor over their crops and try to set aside a little money to those like the Beattys, who earn their money by robbing others and spending it on drink and women. ``Why'd I have to be the one to see the good in him . . . ?'' Lily asks. As she comes to know him better, she realizes he has played an important role in the Beatty gang and his nickname of ``Shot'' was not earned by ineptness. The moral dilemma of right and wrong, good and bad reoccurs to Lily. Is Marion bad because he's robbed a store? Isn't he also good because he loves her, offering her the first fun and happiness she's ever had? YAs will understand exactly why Lily leaves her family for the uncertain life on the lam with the sweet-talking Marion in this romance based on a true incident. --Pam Spencer, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Using a bit of history--lynchings in McDade, Texas during Christmas 1883--Bonner mixes real people and places with her fictional characters and writes a fine first novel, making new and fresh the time-worn theme of a responsible young girl's falling in love with a ne'er-do-well rascal. Lily, the completely credible central character, is so engaging that she practically pulls us into her story and her activities in Texas at that time. We too are easily seduced by the smooth-talking Marion, one of the "Beatty Gang." The book's strongest assets are its verisimilitude, fortified by the wonderful use of the vernacular, and the pure, simple clarity of the writing. For most popular collections. - Dorothy Golden, Georgia Southern Univ., Statesboro Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Bonner's beguiling first novel--about love between a hard- working farm girl and an outlaw in 1883 Texas--manages to be thoroughly romantic without romanticizing violence: a wonderful evocation of time and place and the voice of a strong, hopeful 15- year-old girl. Lily DeLony never meant to go wrong. Why, she wonders, did she have to be different from all the other decent people in town, and be able to see the good in Marion Beatty instead of just the bad? She was maybe more vulnerable than most--motherless and overloaded with endless responsibilities, with no softness or comfort in a hardscrabble life--but Lily is no one's victim or fool. She is moved not just by Marion's charm, good looks, and their stolen kisses but by his own terrible situation: the small town of McDade judges the whole Beatty family no good; Marion has been condemned for his wild older brothers' sins. Not only that: the Beattys get blamed for every violent crime that takes place in the country, even when Lily knows for a fact--or close to it--that they are being falsely accused. As she watches virtuous people, including her father, step over all moral lines in acts of vigilante violence, Lily takes Marion's part. By the time she finds she's been overly optimistic about his innocence, Lily has bit by bit given up old ideas of right and wrong and is committed to her outlaw for better or worse. Even readers who don't approve of Lily's love-choice