Fire Dawn — Virginia Coffman

Hansi Verin becomes the victim of her divided loyalties during the early days of the Revolutionary War when she is drawn to a young British colonel and equally entranced by the more rugged leader of the Long Knives.

The child of a Dutch mother and a Cayuga father, Hansi Verni has grown up facing the prejudice of colonial America -- and she'll give anything to escape it. Frontiersman Jess Taga's offhand, teasing manner infuriates Hansi, but Colonel Shelby Cameron, leader of the British forces, is gratifyingly obsessed with her beauty. When Shelby offers her marriage. Hansi believes she will be free at last from the brutalities and degradation of her life. Too late she discovers that her new husband's craving for her worship is another form of degradation . . . and that Jess's teasing had all along disguised the love for which she's longed.