Hallie Meredith, age 19, is an orphan left to care for her five-year-old half-brother when her stepmother decides to give him away so she can remarry. Hallie ends up as assistant cook on a threshing team, which travels throughout the summer and fall, clearing farmers' fields. The rhythm of the hard work and care for her brother keep her content, especially as she falls in love with the team's leader, Garth MacLeod. Naturally, complications arise to keep the destined lovers apart--a powerful local man who has his eye on Hallie as his mistress; a shrewish farm girl in love with MacLeod; MacLeod's brother, who is in love with Hallie; and MacLeod's possessive daughter. Williams fills the book with period and technical farming details as she carries Hallie through one season as a cook and the start of another as the project engineer and fianc{}ee of Garth MacLeod. Sure to be called for is this historical fiction set in the American heartland of the 1920s. Denise Perry Donavin
Review
“A realistic plot, sound characterization, and effective use of historical detail . . . [A] winning depiction of a more innocent time.” —Publishers Weekly
“Part historical and part romance . . . Williams paints the Kansas landscape vividly; she also describes the prejudices and politics of the time. . . . An enjoyable story.” —Library Journal
Praise for Jeanne Williams
“Williams has a clear-voiced style that transcends genre. . . . She brings to life the small, dusty nowheres of the American West.” —TheKansas City Star
“Jeanne Williams has won a legion of fans with her well-crafted and solidly researched historical romances.” —Daily Press (Newport)
About the Author
Born on the High Plains near the tracks of the Santa Fe Trail, Jeanne Williams’s first memories are of dust storms, tumbleweeds, and cowboy songs. Her debut novel, Tame the Wild Stallion, was published in 1957. Since then, Williams has published sixty-eight more books, most with the theme of losing one’s home and identity and beginning again with nothing but courage and hope, as in the Spur Award–winning The Valiant Women (1980). She was recently inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame, and has won four Western Writers of America Spur Awards and the Levi Strauss Saddleman Award. For over thirty years, Williams has lived in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona.
