Savage In Silk in Bodice Ripper Readers Anonymous

Oct 31, 2010 Jeff Young rated it it was amazing

If I were to choose one author and one romance bodice-ripper paperback to carry the torch of the most eponymous of the genre, it would have to be Donna Comeaux Zide's, SAVAGE IN SILK, published in 1978.
Donna Comeaux Zide is a genuine woman romance novelist from the late 70s to early 80s. She penned about five or six, time-period romance novels, mostly set in medieval Europe to the mid-19th century Europe pan North America. This time period is most favored by romance novelists including its wil If I were to choose one author and one romance bodice-ripper paperback to carry the torch of the most eponymous of the genre, it would have to be Donna Comeaux Zide's, SAVAGE IN SILK, published in 1978.
Donna Comeaux Zide is a genuine woman romance novelist from the late 70s to early 80s. She penned about five or six, time-period romance novels, mostly set in medieval Europe to the mid-19th century Europe pan North America. This time period is most favored by romance novelists including its wild-child daughter, the bodice-ripper. Men were wilder; wars were far more common and widespread and the bounds of civilization more tenuous than today. Hence the relationships of men and women were presumed more unretrained, passionate, and equally destructive. The concept would probably be there is little pleasure that is worth it without some pain and wild passion behind it.
I've had the opportunity to peruse Zide's other romance novels and I can report that her SAVAGE IN SILK stands out above the others. Her other time-period romance novels hardly qualify as bodice-rippers. These are tame in comparison with SAVAGE IN SILK. Donna must have been going through some wild, emotional tumult in her life, which she sublimated passionately in SAVAGE IN SILK.
SAVAGE IN SILK has every single qualifying characteristic and feature of the classic bodice-ripper, and 'then some'. You all know what those are but SAVAGE is the piece de jour, the grand super deluxe of the bodice ripper novel, total guilty pleasure. Once you read SAVAGE, it's disappointing to read Zide's other novels. Those are bodice-ripper-lite. Once you've sampled filet mignon in SAVAGE, you can't go back to hamburger steak. Donna Comeaux Zide takes us on a roller coaster time period sexual thrill that dangerously threads the line of pornography and it doesn't put off but rather entice you in further. All I can say is that SAVAGE IN SILK is the closest thing to a literary sex drug if there ever was one.
In the late 1830s somewhere out in the far American west, Lilith, a beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde, 15-year old pioneeress enjoys passionate lovemaking with her chosen fiance, 18-year old farmer's son, Tom. This is way before the time of birth control and safe sex and Zide lets you know that in the euphemistic literary ways women romance novelists are famous for. Bare moments after their physical consummation, the homestead is waylaid by a native Indian raiding party, whose reasons for attacking and pillaging are never explained by Zide since it's superfluous. Needless to say, a young, virile Indian warrior barely clad in but a loincloth, assaults the nude, white couple, cowering under their blanket in the storage building. The savage brave dispatches Tom with one tomahawk blow to the head. Without further ado, the savage brave savagely proceeds to rape the teen blonde, in an lurid act of unfettered human lust described by Zide that will have you racing for a cold shower. It does not matter or occur to the brave that he is the second man after Tom but as Zide writes, he unleashes a flood of 'life-giving fluids' into our hapless blonde. I don't know what was going on through Zide's mind at the time of her writing this bodice ripper, but clearly she was at her most prolific and provocative. Zide would not reprise this intensity in her later writings.
Lilith endures further indignity as her nubile body betrays her during the rape and becomes physically aroused, leading to an unasked for orgasm. This is a bodice ripper; what else did you think? The young indian warrior spares Lilith's life, taking just a lock of her blonde hair as a keepsake.
The book jumps forward in time to its intended protagonist, Mariah, the beautiful half-breed offspring of Lilith's rape. The book lends the distinct impression that in spite of being half-native Indian, the dark-eyed, dark-haired Mariah appears full Caucasian, something like a French Canadian or dark Irish girl. Mariah is mature for her 17 years. She is a good person, gentle but assertive when she needs to be. But she is still very vulnerable to the desires and lusts of men, as this book will clearly show.
In one way, the book's lurid and gratifying sexuality throughout can be distracting to what later becomes an interesting odyessey for our young Mariah as she falls in love with a well-to-do rancher who turns out to be a British aristocrat whose persona and masculinity resembles more that of a rugged, American western man. His name is Jared and he is much older than Mariah, just barely into his thirties. They fall in love but that does not stop Mariah from running afoul of bad men's desires and lusts as Mariah endures her first of several rapes in the book at the hands of angry, lust-crazed men who let themselve become sex-obsessed fiends when they hang around our innocent heroine too long. Mariah is stereotypical of the bodice ripper heroine, young, intelligent, good-natured but naive and whose vulnerable sexuality is like a Jekyll and Hyde potion to the wrong men who cross her path in life.
As in all bodice ripper books the young heroine is emotionally and psychologically durable and resilient in overcoming the trauma of rape. She is able to quickly put all that behind her. Yet SAVAGE stays true to its bodice ripper genre. There is something almost biblical about the curse of the bodice ripper maiden. Men will bring her great pleasure but pain in her life, but she will always want her man. Newly-wed husband Jared later leaves his prospering ranch to take up his British Army officers commission inthe Crimean War, set in southeast Europe. At this point is maybe somewhat a leap of credulity, but this is commonplace in the genre. Mariah follows her husband into Europe and tries to rescue him after she learns the Russians have captured Jared in battle.
I give credit to writer Donna Comeaux Zide for doing her historical research. There's sufficient historical background information of the Crimean War and its geographical setting to make the novel believable. Suffice to say, the Russians prove themselves to be real bastards. Mariah finds her husband locked in some dungeon at an old castle or similar structure being used by the Russian Tsarist army as a POW prison. The prison's warden, a Russian army officer, has ideas of his own when he sets eyes upon the lovely Mariah. He takes Mariah to the dungeon and shows her a horrid scene of Jared being flogged by some bald, thuggish, bare-chested Cossack. A horrified Maria is desperate to do anything to stop her husband's torment and she readily agrees to the sleazy Russian officer's indecent proposal. With little recourse, Mariah does as instructed and walks up to the Russian officer's sumptuous quarters, where she undresses nude and slips under the covers. The Russian shortly enters, disrobes, enthusiastically gets into bed and then has the temerity to demand Mariah show some passion and enthusiasm instead of just lying there. Trying her best under difficult, unmotivating circumstances, mariah receives the shock of the ultimate shame as the Russian really shows how much of a bastard he is. The door opens and the henchman Cossack frog-marches the wrenched Jared into the room and pins his arms back, forcing the poor man to watch his wife, Mariah, naked in the arms of his prison warden, who orchestrated the whole miserable spectacle for apparently little other reason than to get his jollies. Still, the reader understands the bodice ripper elements of forced sex, voyeurism, and publicly viewed sex cleverly woven into the scene. Needless to say, Jared is most displeased at his wife's initiative and this sets off a great deal of friction between the couple that threatens their marriage, especially after Jared escapes the prison and after many travails, he and Mariah find their way back to America. I won't spoil the whole book for you nor give awy the ultimate reconciliation between Jared and Mariah, when the exasperated Mariah has finally had it and tells off Jared, recounting the numerous affronts to her dignity and reputation including the rapes she's had to endure. You know it's going to end satisfactorily if perfunctorily. But you should read the book for yourself. For myself, I'd love to see this book optioned off into a movie although it would be a challenge to keep an R rating. But it could be done. ...more

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Nov 01, 2022 Sarah Mac marked it as unread

Shelves: bodice-ripper, cover-me-red, squeamish-book-cooties, vintage, brass-bra-and-bear-trap-panties, cover-me-violet, historical, guileless-ott-joy, western-prairie-to-pacific-coast, alpha-asshole-alert

Putting Mariah & Jared back on the TBR. Nothing wrong with them, per se, but I’m in a gothic/fantasy/hqn mood, not a ripper mood…so I’ll return (restart?) this another time.

{NTS: Paused @ chapter 9.}

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Sep 26, 2011 Sharon rated it liked it

Shelves: american-frontier, alpha-male, regency, rape, spitfire, historical-romance, bodice-ripper, 1800-s, forced-seduction, violence

It probably wasn’t good to read this book immediately after my previous read. I couldn't stop comparing similarities within the plots or the differences in each author's writing talent. That said, my rating/review may have been a bit different otherwise...but I don't know about that...

The book opens with a prelude. A brief scene of massacre and rape on a ranch in the Montana Territory in 1834 provides the background of the heroine. It did give a small glimpse into the character of one woman I th ...more

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Nov 10, 2011 Elle rated it it was ok

Mariah grew up believing she was the daughter of a wealthy couple in St. Louis. When she refuses to marry the young man chosen for her, they send her to live with her "sister" at a ranch in Montana. Jared, the man who comes to guide her gets on her nerves right off--he goads her and demeans her from the start,but of course she has to fall in love with him. It's never quite clear where the relationship comes from, as he always treats her badly, and he jumps pretty abruptly from finding her childi ...more

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