This was a good book. It’s about a girl Lou (.Tempa) who is sent into prostitution and then she meets Henry a German immigrant. This book moved at a fast pace. Very interesting characters!

This is one of the best stories I have read in a long while. Lou was a prostitute, but her heart was still tender enough to help others. Life is not fair, but Lou was strong enough to survive. It was not a story that is written every day and I liked the surprise of this story. Kudos to the author for such an amazing story! I look forward to reading more from this author.

I really wanted to move this book. I was intrigued by the premise and the setting, since the old west is not often covered in historical fiction/romance. I also loved the personal story attached to this book. The first half of the book grabbed my attention, but the second half was much slower with little character development and side characters stories that slowed down the plot and didn't add to the overall story of Tempa and Henry. The violence, both towards animals and people, seemed gratuitous and didn't add to the story overall.

This was such a fascinating look into a time, place, and situation that I’ve not read about before. While there were some difficult and graphic parts, they were important to the story and character development. All of the characters were well drawn, complex and interesting.

Lou has to overcome such misfortune in her life that you can not help but to feel for her. All seems filled with despair until a budding friendship develops with Henry. When Lou a.k.a. Tempa finds Henry barely alive on the bank of a stream, she helps him. We learn both their stories in adeptly-placed flashbacks. Disappointment, crisis, heartache, loss, and cruelty challenge them again and again, and they hurt each other, as well, trying to survive. Will she and Henry ever get together? A must read to find out.

This story really stuck with me, and I take my hat off to Suzette Bruggeman on her debut in historical fiction. Job well done!

I found this book quite a long read. Very well written. Lou has to overcome such misfortune in her life that you can not help but to feel for her. All seems filled with despair until a budding friendship.
A grave insight to how some women were treated with no say in their lives at all.

As the story opens, Lou is a young teen, stunned nearly comatose by loss. Her entire family has been wiped out by an epidemic. When she is taken in by her not-much-older sister, now married to a horrific man, she is raped and dumped on the doorstep of a whorehouse to make a living for herself. We learn in adeptly-placed flashbacks how her fortunes rose and fell, but now she is working a mining town with three other prostitutes. The four women rent "cribs" -- little more than animal pens built of stone with tin roofs -- from which to ply their survival.

Henry is twenty, on the run from a psychopathic rancher for whom he worked and was forced into criminal deeds. When Lou (who took the name Tempa when she became a prostitute) finds Henry barely alive on the bank of a stream, she helps him. A friendship is born that will grow into love which Lou cannot allow herself to accept. Will she and Henry ever get together? Disappointment, crisis, heartache, loss, and cruelty challenge them again and again, and they hurt each other, as well, trying to survive. Henry works in a mine so dispiriting that the miners make friends of the rats who clean up after the men.

This book was almost too negative for me, although I do believe it was an accurate depiction of how hard life was in those circumstances. Really horrific. The few times Henry and Lou found beauty or happiness in small things, it was as much a relief to the reader. The writer is to be commended for her diligence and story-craft, but this is a gritty tale.

Suzette Bruggeman does a great job in telling a good historical novel, I enjyoed getting to know Tempa as a main character. She felt like a real person living their life in this town. I had enjoyed the romance aspect of this book and thought it worked well with the Old West vibe.

"She felt his confirmation like heavy chains around her ankles. “Benjamin Lamont.” The name escaped on a breath. She sank back down into the grass. Somewhere deep inside her, a wound she’d foolishly thought healed burst open and spread like poison through her veins. Her head slowly shook back and forth. “The expert on stealing…and killing…and getting away with it,” she said hollowly. “He’s back.” There was no air behind those two little words."

I loved getting reading Desert Phoenix! The fact that it was based on a true story is really astounding. I love historical romance books, they're right up my forte, and this desert Phoenix scratched that itch of mine and made me also read Suzette's other book, Skinny Leg. If you're a fan of Redeeming Love, then you'll also like this book as well. The writing was very easy to comprehend and let me get sucked into the story and forget everything else. I loved this book and recommend everyone read it!