A Talent for Loving is a brilliant, individualistic, stylish, fascinating, funny, acute and digestible, if utterly different from Condon’s other books in every way – a “non-historical comedy” as he calls it. The scene: the vast Patten Ranch, largest in the world, built and owned by an inveterate gambler, Major Patten. The time: 1844 as the book opens.

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In a brilliant spoof, with every classical Western tradition built in, however precariously, A Talent for Loving tells the story of Major Patten’s beautiful daughter Evalina, who grows up bearing the age-old curse of Montezuma, a curse that dooms her to an excessive talent for, and an almost insane need of, loving, at the instant of her first carnal embrace.

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Not one, but two paragons of all Western virtues, Patten’s adopted sons, fall madly and  hopelessly in love with Evalina, compromising her to such an extent that honor demands a marriage. So does Major Patten and Evalina. But no one can decide which hero should be her husband, least of all the prospective bride who finds both men irresistible.

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Patten’s own lust for gambling leads to a series of Herculean contests matching the two young men in every conceivable test, race and show of endurance. Finally, both cowboys face one contest that cannot end in a draw. The hair raising climax involves the Indians saving the whites from the cavalry and the assorted demands of honor are fulfilled in a spectacular conclusion that neither Evalina, nor the reader could possibly have guessed.