The Thaw Bride

Synopsis

"She crossed half the country to marry a stranger. Only to discover that her fiancé was dead—and that the author of the letters she fell in love with was still alive."

Montana Territory, 1886. Fleeing an unjust scandal in Boston, Maren Odell seeks "a small and true life" as a mail-order bride. But stepping off the stagecoach in the rugged town of Farrow, she is met with a fresh grave and an unforgiving winter about to isolate the entire territory.

Penniless and with nowhere to call home, Maren proposes a strictly business arrangement to her late fiancé's taciturn brother: she will keep the books and run the house at the Larkspur ranch until the spring thaw allows her to leave. Hollis Bratton is a man of heavy silences, rough hands, and a secret that is eating him alive. He never asked for a woman in his house, much less one with an iron will ready to tear down all his walls.

As the worst blizzards of the century trap them together, Maren discovers that the ranch's ledgers hide an unscrupulous banker's swindle. And even more dangerous: the sullen man who can barely sign his own name possesses the soul of the poet who stole her heart in ink and paper.

In the midst of the cruelest winter of the century, can a woman who has stopped believing in promises save the land of the man who lent her his words?