Colonial Times...Grim.

While writing BLOOD CURSE, book 2 in the Branded Trilogy, I had to do more research than I expected. When I was plotting for this particular book, I actually changed the date three times before going back to my original timeline of 1723. This placed me during the Colonial era. I remembered learning in school a bit about the 13 Colonial States and how they were founded, but that was as far as my knowledge went.

Out came the books, and websites. I needed to know certain facts in order to even begin plotting my story. Where would the events take place? Who lived there? What did they eat? What did they wear? So many questions that only researching could answer.

However, I do not want to discuss the research I did use, but rather the facts I found interesting and appalling at the same time, that I did not use. I cannot lie and tell you I was not intrigued to read everything I'd found on customary lifestyle back then. I couldn't get enough of it...the reason I am a historical writer.

In order for my story to not be bogged down with realisms like uncleanliness, bed bugs, teeth brushing, etc... I needed to either not include some of the details I'd found, or romanticize them so my reader wouldn't be repulsed.

And so...like any historical fiction writer, I did the latter and plotted my story around the gory details of the lives that lived hundreds of years before us.  

Bathing routines: While we bathe at least once a day, back in Colonial times bathing was not as common. In Medieval times people thought bathing caused disease, or let the devil in, some even thought it caused erotic behaviour. The morbid thoughts did not carry into the 1700's. The act of washing ones self was simply not a priority.
The labor and time it took to draw a bath did not appeal to most and therefore was put off as a chore rather than a pleasure. In fact, everyone had body odor back then, so it was unnoticed among each other and became somewhat of a common smell. For those sensitive to the smell a handkerchief doused in perfume was held over the nostrils and mouth.

Bathing rituals when done were often a family affair. The tub would be filled allowing the head of the house to bathe first, then all the other males, the women and lastly the children. The water had to be black by then and I’m sure smelled awful.

Perukes: These were the white haired wigs men wore. Powdered and scented with lavender or orange oil to rid the stale smell. The wigs were curled at the sides and tied at the nape. Some longer than others, but all hung past the chin. Perukes came into fashion during the 1500’s in England because of the syphilis outbreak. Men used them to disguise their STD, which resulted in baldness; open sores on the body including face and head, and could also lead to blindness. The headdress was not looked upon as fashion but rather a necessity at hiding ones horrendous features.

In 1655 the King of France, Louis XIV commissioned 48 wig makers to help hide his balding at the age of 17. His cousin Charles II King of England also did the same thing and the fad caught on. Soon England’s higher and middle classes were wearing Perukes.

The fashion carried on throughout the colonies and most everyone wore a headdress of white goat, horse or human hair. These heavy, and often filled with nits, hair pieces would go unwashed for months.

Disease: Due to the uncleanliness of the people and their belongings disease ran rampant throughout the Colonies. In the early days the people had no knowledge on how to fight the sickness, often being the first time they’d seen the disease.

As time passed physicians grew an understanding of how to aid and heal the sick. But death was still a very common outcome to most who suffered from them.

Epidemics of Small Pox, Yellow Fever and Plague killed thousands. These diseases purged the Colonies ceasing all work, closing businesses and caused the people to flee the country or go into hiding.

At one point the death rate for Yellow Fever was so high people had to work day and night to bury the dead. Malaria, Typhoid, and Beriberi were all common diseases that could lead to death if not treated.

Being a historical writer I'd love to travel back in time, however these facts make me want to keep my visit short. 

Happy Friday!

Cheers,

Kat

www.katflannerybooks.com 

Love in Days Gone By

I love writing historical romance, and one of the most fascinating and enjoyable aspects of that career is the research involved to bring characters to life. It's quite an understatement, of course, to say that life in the past was much different from today, yet in many ways, human nature hasn't changed all that much. Women then, as now, have wanted love and happiness, and have appreciated the values of home and family.

In The Wrong Woman, I wrote the following. In this little snippet from the story, Abigail and a friend begin by discussing a man...and end up contemplating what it means to be a woman:

~ ~ ~

“Let’s put our heads together, shall we? Maybe we can figure out why Will is acting so peculiar.”

Abigail pulled up a chair. “He’s a man, that’s why.”

“Men are always joking about their inability to understand women, but it works both ways, don’t you think?” asked Julia. “I mean, men are probably much more of a puzzlement than any woman could ever be. Our wants are so simple, really. We want to be loved and respected. We want to make a good marriage, raise a family of well-mannered children, and grow comfortably old with the man we love. What’s so difficult to understand in that?” The question was rhetorical. It required no response.

What an accurate observation, thought Abigail as she sipped her tea. In a few simple, straight-forward sentences, Julia had neatly summed up the precise nature of being a woman.

Love and marriage.

Home and family.

~ ~ ~

Fortunately, women had many helpful resources to which they could turn for practical advice and down-to-earth instructions on how to achieve those cherished goals.  One popular reference was Married Love, also known as Love in Marriage, written by Dr. Maria Carmichael Stopes. 

I've browsed around a bit and have come up with some very interesting bits of advice from Dr. Stopes.

Marriage and Toiletry

Now, it may enchant a man once -- perhaps even twice -- or at long intervals -- to watch his goddess screw her hair up into a tight and unbecoming knot and soap her ears. But it is inherently too unlovely a proceeding to retain indefinite enchantment.

To see a beautiful woman floating in the deep, clear water of her bath -- that may enchant for ever, for it is so lovely, but the unbeautiful trivialities essential to the daily toilet tend only to blur the picture and to dull the interest and attention that should be bestowed on the body of the loved one.

Pet Him

Men are, at heart, eternally children, and such tender petting as comforts children warms and sweetens a grown man's life. The "good night" should be a time of delightful forgetting of the outward scars of the years, and a warm, tender, perhaps playful exchange of confidence.

Be Always Escaping

Man is still essentially the hunter, the one who experiences the desires and thrills of the chase, and dreams ever of coming unawares upon Diana in the woodlands. I think that, in the interests of husbands, an important piece of advice to wives is: Be always escaping.

Ensure that you allow your husband to come upon you only when there is delight in the meeting. 

Whenever the finances allow, the husband and wife should have separate bedrooms, failing that, they should have a curtain which can at will be drawn so as to divide the room they share.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yes, life was different indeed in days gone by. Love, too, was different in some respects, yet very much the same in others. I believe we can learn from the past, and I hope to create a home for my family that reflects many of the traditional, "old-fashioned" values which were once taught as part of what it meant to be a woman.

Finding little gems of wisdom through my research always brings a smile to my heart, and I'll leave you now with this sage advice for  loving wives and their husbands:

Never speak loudly to one another, unless the house is on fire.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Until next month...may your lives be blessed with love!

Christina                   

Myth, Women and Texas

by Lyn Horner

Every region, every country, every civilization has its special brand of mythology. Today I'll share some thoughts on the subject from Texas women, taken from Quotable Texas Women compiled by Susie Kelly Flatau and Lou Halsell Rodenberger.



"The future is created by the stories we tell about who we are and where we are going." ~ Betty Sue Flowers

"As you move through life, you experience a unique journey filled with many paths -- paths of success and failure, of glory and despair, of luck and misfortune. You encounter friends and family, guides and nemeses. And all contribute to your unique myth. It is that myth which must be recorded -- one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time." ~ Susie Kelly Flatau

"Our stories are important. By telling them, by telling our real, true woman's story, we will challenge and correct all the myths and made-up stories about women's lives." ~ Susan Wittig Albert

"Myths do not just emerge full-blown, like Athena from the head of Zeus. They're made up of bits and pieces of other myths -- and the Texas myth is made up of bits and pieces of the hero myth." ~ Betty Sue Flowers

"I began to understand that all Texas is an eternal synthesis of past and present, superimposed one upon the other. It produces a feeling of being in two places at once." ~ Mary Lasswell

"Myth has always been male. Forever, men have sat around and talked, and, yes, even gossiped. That's where mythology comes from." ~ Beverly Stoeltje

"It came home to me that each of us carries within him an imperishable core of regional memory." ~ Mary Lasswell

"Told long enough, or granted enough significance, stories became myth, and myth becomes the psyche of culture, the commonly held knowledge by which a culture defines and describes itself and its members." ~ Nancy Baker Jones

"Heroism exists only within a storytelling community. Without storytelling, heroism becomes a cultural impossibility." ~ Betty Sue Flowers

"The myth of Texas is undeniably masculine. Say 'Texas' and what comes to most people's minds is cowboys and Indians -- lusty trail drivers of the sort depicted by Larry McMurtry in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove -- brawny oil field workers yearning to 'bring in a big'un' -- football players giving their all for the glory of the team." ~ Suzanne Comer

"Few former farm people wax nostalgic about the old days. No one misses the near starvation, the shacks, the rags that sometimes passes for clothing." ~ Rebecca Sharpless



Every author who writes about the Old West, Texas in particular, enlarges the mythology of a time and place gone by. Our pioneer ancestors were just people like you and me, but in our mythology they have become heroes and heroines. And why not? They settled a wild land, conquering seemingly insurmountable obstacles, sometimes with brutal methods, always with hope for tomorrow. I wonder if future generations will see us in the same heroic light



 

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Full of Bull: Mail-Order Ruckus by @JacquieRogers #mailorderbride #western #romance

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Casanova – The Shy Bull

by Jacquie Rogers

In my latest book, Mail-Order Ruckus, the second book in Mail-Order Tangle (the first book, Mail-Order Promise, was written by Caroline Clemmons), Matt Johanssen buys a prize Durham bull. Several readers have asked me about him, so I decided to write a little about bulls today.

Durham Cattle

First of all, Durhams are now called Beef Shorthorns. In the 1800s, they were the dominant breed found in the Old West, although not so much now. These cattle were a result of a systematic breeding program developed by the Colling brothers in Durham County, England. At this time, Shorthorns were used equally for milk and beef. Later, Thomas Booth selected animals better suited for beef, while Thomas Bates bred for milk, and that’s when the Milking Shorthorn and Beef Shorthorn breeds came about. Because my book is set in 1881, I use “Durham,” the more common American term for the breed at the time.

In brief, Laura Dickerson (heroine), describes a quality bull:

She squeezed in between them and studied the bull. “Nice conformation—straight back, squared body, strong hindquarters. You should get some quality calves from him.”

A good bull has a short, muscular neck with a hump. He has a clean underline and his legs are square under his body, with hooves that don’t toe-in or toe-out. Quality calves come from quality dams and sires, so just any bull won’t do. You pick the best of the best.

2,000 Pounds of Muscle and Testosterone

A lot of people don’t know what bulls are all about. They’re a lot different than cows. You can herd cows or steers. Bulls—not so much. A cow will run away from you but a bull will stand his ground, and if he feels threatened, will charge. So in fight-or-flight terms, a cow is flight and a bull is fight. They’ll charge just about anything and aren’t the slightest bit intimidated by horses or a man on horseback, so cowhands keep a sharp eye on a bull's behavior to prevent injury to their horses or themselves. Or both.

Cattle Handling Tips- Moving Bulls

Demeanor

Just like any other animal (or human), bulls have a variety of temperaments and this is an inherited trait. Docile bulls are good as long as they also have a strong libido (after all, they do have to perform). Aggressive bulls breed aggressive calves, so the rancher has to take that into account. In a situation where cows run on open range, they need to be more aggressive to survive, so it’s not necessarily a negative. If the cattle operation is primarily on close ranchland, then a more docile bull would be more desirable.

In Mail-Order Ruckus, Casanova is both—he’s aggressive toward just about everyone except Laura. As for libido, he’s good there except he’s shy and isn’t interested in performing in front of others, whether cows or humans.

The Real Casanova

Actually, Casanova is the product of two Holstein bulls my dad had on our farm. One bull was named Pete. Pete would snort, bellow, and paw the ground whenever my dad came around and I was given warnings of dire consequences if I went anywhere near the bullpen. But Pete liked me to scratch his ears. I’d sneak out to the bullpen and visit him when Dad wasn’t around.   Pete never once exhibited aggressive behavior toward me.

Then we had another Holstein bull named Goober. He was a mellow bull, but when we put him with the cows, they chased him all over the pasture. Finally, Dad had to have a birds and bees talk with him. It turned out that Goober did just fine when there was only one cow in the bullpen and he had some privacy.

I combined both bulls into Casanova, who took a liking to Laura right away, but was shy about doing the deed under observation. I included all these scenes in Mail-Order Ruckus, and I hope you enjoy them. Here’s the scene where Matt turns Casanova out with a herd of cows in heat.  This is almost exactly what happened why my dad put Goober in the pasture with several heifers.

Excerpt from 

Mail-Order Ruckus

by Jacquie Rogers

Book 2 in Mail-Order Tangle

Matt herded his prize bull to the pasture where he’d earlier put the quality cows in heat. If the bull did his job, in nine months he’d have some fine heifers and they’d be the best breeding stock in the territory. The Durham bull had cost a fortune, but quality sires built quality herds, and quality herds made money.

“Have fun,” he said as he veered away. Matt didn’t drive the bull too close to the cows because a smart man never got between a bull and a cow in heat. The bull would be happy to have such pretty cows clamoring for his attention, and he’d mosey on over to the herd soon enough.

Except he never did.

One cow lifted her head and sniffed. So did another. And another. Next thing he knew, the cows barreled toward to bull at full tilt. The bull let out a snort—or maybe it was a squeak—and turned tail, running as fast as his legs would carry him back to his corral. The cows nearly trampled Matt’s horse. He spurred the gelding and galloped after the bull.

Once the bull was past the gate, he ran directly to the hay manger. Matt dismounted and closed the gate, but scrambled to the top of the corral fence when the cows thundered toward the bull, thwarted by the fence. They gathered around, mooing and carrying on.

Obviously, Matt’s prize Durham bull had a lot to learn about sex.

♥ ♥ ♥

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The Westward Ho Parade

By Shanna Hatfield

Last month, Captain Cavedweller (aka my charming husband) and I had the opportunity to attend the world-famous Pendleton Round-Up and some of the festivities connected with the rodeo.

There are many things that make the experience at this rodeo different from others.

 

The grass covering the arena floor is one-of-a-kind in the world of rodeo, adding a unique challenge for competitors. I've heard the impact of landing on it wreaks havoc on the ankles and most of the steer wrestlers get their ankles wrapped for the extra support it provides.

The Native American encampment behind the arena is the largest in North America with more than 300 teepees annually joining in the event.

It was also the first rodeo to have rodeo royalty, starting with the very first Round-Up in 1910.

People come from all over the world to see the rodeo and take in the entire Pendleton Round-Up experience. I know that for a fact because I shook hands with a man from Norway, directed a woman from England to a restroom and listened to Japanese tourists gush over the bling-y offerings at one of the vendor booths.

 

The Westward Ho Parade is one of our favorite activities to take in during the Round-Up. It is the longest non-motorized parade in the country. 

 For spectators, that means a great parade full of beautiful horses and wagons.

I was absolutely goofy for this horse and loved the Pendleton Wool saddle blanket, too.

Many of the riders and horses wear regalia that has been passed down from generation to generation. (Don't you love the colors?)

 There's even a team of oxen who get in on the fun, although toward the end of the parade they didn't appear to be enjoying it quite as much as the rest of us.

If you've ever thought about attending the Pendleton Round-Up, it is well worth the time and your trip to do it at least once.

The Round-Up is highlighted in both books in my Rodeo Romance series.

 In The Christmas Cowboy, Tate Morgan is a saddle bronc rider out to claim a World Champion title. He gets a little sidetracked, though, when he falls in love with Kenzie Beckett, a girl he meets at the airport who wants nothing to do with cowboys in general and him in particular.

 Wrestlin' Christmas is the second book in the series and again includes a scene at the Pendleton Round-Up. Sidelined after a major injury, steer wrestler Cort McGraw loses his direction for life. Shanghaied by his sister and best friend, he finds himself on a run-down ranch with a worrisome, albeit gorgeous widow, and her silent, solemn son.

***

A hopeless romantic with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure, Shanna Hatfield is a best-selling author of clean romantic fiction written with a healthy dose of humor. In addition to blogging and eating too much chocolate, she is completely smitten with her husband, lovingly known as Captain Cavedweller.

Shanna creates character-driven romances with realistic heroes and heroines. Her historical westerns have been described as “reminiscent of the era captured by Bonanza and The Virginian” while her contemporary works have been called “laugh-out-loud funny, and a little heart-pumping sexy without being explicit in any way.”

She is a member of Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and Romance Writers of America.

Find Shanna’s books at:

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The Four Corners Area of the United States

By Kristy McCaffrey

A popular tourist destination is the Four Corners area in the southwestern U.S. Here, one can occupy Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado at once.

My husband and I at Four Corners on a chilly New
Year's Eve.

Within this expanse are four prominent landmarks: Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, the Painted Desert, and Shiprock.

Monument Valley is located on the Arizona-Utah border on the Colorado Plateau, and the Navajo have preserved the area as a vast tribal park. The iconic sandstone buttes and spires rising from the ground have become famous worldwide, due in part to filmmaker John Ford who featured the area in many western movies in the 1940's and 1950's.

Monument Valley 

Canyon de Chelly (pronounced 'de shay') National Monument is located in northeastern Arizona within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation. Rock art and other excavations reveal human habitation for at least 4,500 years, encompassing not just the Navajo but the ancient Anasazi as well. In the 18th century this became a major stronghold of the Navajo—the high canyon walls offered protection and the streams helped grow corn crops and peach trees. Today, Navajo still live here.

Canyon de Chelly

The Painted Desert, approximately 120 miles long and 60 miles wide, is composed of stratified layers of easily erodible siltstone, mudstone, and shale. The layers of rock contain an abundance of iron and manganese, which cause the varied colors of the region. This area also includes the Petrified Forest National Park, a landscape frozen in time for more than 220 million years, revealing colorful petrified wood and animal fossils. How does wood become petrified? Long-ago floods carried timber onto a plain, then, over time, minerals in the water replaced the wood cells, filling the spaces with quartz and jasper crystals.

The Painted Desert

Petrified Forest National Park

Located in northwestern New Mexico, Shiprock rises 1,583 feet on a desolate plain and is visible in all directions for many miles. It has great religious and historical significance to the Navajo people.

Shiprock

~ Now Available in Print and Digital ~

Cowboys, Creatures, and Calico Vol. 2

Haunted tales of romance set in the Old West

Includes my short story

"The Crow and the Coyote"

In Arizona Territory, Hannah Dobbin travels through Cañon de Chelly, home to the Navajo, in search of a sorcerer who murdered her pa. Bounty Hunter Jack Boggs is on the trail of a vile Mexican bandito, but with the shadows of Hallowtide descending, more dark magic is at hand than either of them know.

What better way to spend Halloween than with some handsome cowboys and feisty heroines who are determined to fall in love despite their supernatural powers—or lack thereof. Halloween's a good time to take a chance on love—and to see what these Cowboys, Creatures, and Calico Vol. 2 stories might reveal to the unsuspecting reader—YOU!

Cheryl Pierson's Spellbound will have you on the edge of your seat as safecracker Brett Diamond and witch Angie Colton take on a border gang leader who is pure evil. Can Angie's supernatural powers save them? No matter what, Brett and Angie are hopelessly spellbound.

C. Marie Bowen's Hunter and Lily Graham is an unforgettable tale of a beautiful school marm's love for her children that surpasses all. When a Cajun bounty hunter known only as "Hunter" shows up, Lily knows he, and no one else, can help her save a young girl.

Have Wand—Will Travel is Jacquie Roger's offering about a handsome young mage, Tremaine Ramsey, who has a wand and knows how to use it...sometimes. Will his magic be strong enough to pull off a daring rescue of his father from the evil Gharth? Or will he need the warrior Nora's love to help him see his Fate through?

Will Kaye Spencer's character, Mercy Pontiere, be able to break a centuries-old curse and find true love all at the same time? It all depends on Reid Corvane and what he'll do For Love of a Brystile Witch.

In Kristy McCaffrey's story, The Crow and the Coyote, Hannah Dobbin is after an evil Navajo sorcerer who murdered her father, and she's determined to see him dead. But she'll need a bounty hunter—The Crow—to help find this vile man. With Hallowtide upon them, more evil is afoot than they can handle; but love will find a way.

A failed bank robber, Tombstone Hawkins, along with a fake gypsy fortune teller, Pansy Gilchrist, set out to make both their deceased fathers proud in one final spectacular heist. Family Tradition is Kathleen Rice Adam's tale of the discovery of true love amid the commission of a crime—or the failure to commit a crime—while being overseen by the ghosts of the couple's fathers. How can there be a happy ending? It's Halloween, and anything can happen!

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Happy Halloween!!

From Villain to Hero by Peggy L. Henderson

by: Peggy L Henderson

I have a new release coming out this month, the third book in my western/time travel romance series, Second Chances. The book is titled Diamond in the Dust.  I put off writing this book, pushing it back to write two other books in two different series between Book 2 and Book 3 because, frankly, writing this one scared me to death. Why? 

First of all, I don't like writing in a contemporary setting, and this story calls for the hero to come from the old west of 1872 to modern times. Reason #2: It was "suggested" to me when I was nearly two-thirds done writing the second book, Ain't No Angel, that I write the "bad guy" in that book as the hero in another book. Ooookaaay....how to turn a guy with vindictive motives into someone likable, with a slow progression from his old self to someone the reader can root for,  and give him his own story and HEA? 

Well, the returns so far from my beta readers and my editor have been quite encouraging, some even saying this is my best book to date. Well, we'll see. It's definitely one of the most emotionally-charged books I've ever written, and with the most broken hero I've ever come up with. 

Here's a short excerpt from Diamond in the Dust:

“Mr. McFarlain . . . Gabe,” the reverend’s voice called from behind him. Gabe cursed under his breath. Sweat beaded his forehead, and one of the cuts above his eye stung. Damn, the air was hot and dry here. He coughed, and caught his breath. Looking ahead, there appeared to be nothing but desert as far as the eye could see. Footsteps crunched close behind him, and Gabe stopped to turn.

“Ain’t you through with your meddling, Reverend?” he said heatedly.

Reverend Johnson came rushing up to him, his face flushed and looking winded. The old man’s eyes clouded with concern for the first time. He stopped in front of Gabe, and looked straight up at him.

“My meddling, Mr. McFarlain, has prevented you from ruining your brother’s life, a man who has done nothing but good things for you. I will concede that I may have overstepped my bounds when I sent you here. I’ve never sent anyone to another time without an explicit task that they’ve agreed to complete. I had no choice, however. It was the only way to right a wrong, and reunite Laney with Tyler.”

“Then send me back to where I belong.”

Gabe ran a frustrated hand through his hair. He clenched his jaw, the anger in him ready to boil over hotter than the sun beating down on him. All his life, he’d had to scrape and fight for everything, like a stray mongrel, on the streets of every dusty town where Cora and he had moved.

Nothing had ever come to him the easy way. Even now, the reverend was telling him that he’d returned Laney to Tyler, just like that, but the old man couldn’t do anything to send him back to where he belonged. He had no idea where to go or what to do, but for the moment, he allowed his anger to guide him.

“It’s your turn to come to a decision, Mr. McFarlain,” the reverend continued. “Remain here and allow me to help you learn to live in this time, or, as Miss Bartlett has kindly suggested, you will be incarcerated as a mentally ill person.”

“This don’t concern her.” Gabe’s voice lowered menacingly. The last thing he wanted was for Morgan to get involved with this preacher.  “I don’t want anything from you, old man,” he added. “You’ve meddled with my life enough. I’ve done everything on my own for as long as I can remember. I’ll get along just fine without you.”

“I urge you to reconsider, Mr. McFarlain,” the reverend said, his eyes wide. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Gabe advanced on the reverend. “I said I don’t want anything from you. Unless you can send me back to where I belong, get out of my sight, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Fighting off a wave of dizziness, Gabe turned on his heels, and headed briskly in the direction that led out of this town. 

Reverend Johnson is in the business of granting second chances to those deserving a new start, even if it means bending the rules of time travel on occasion. In Gabe McFarlain’s case, he may have gone too far . . .

Abandoned by his father, and raised in a whorehouse, Gabe has grown bitter to the world. Fueled by revenge and hatred, his actions leave him facing the hangman’s noose. Accepting certain death, he wakes up in a time and place that is as foreign to him as the tender touch of the woman who rescues him.

Down to earth and level-headed, Morgan Bartlett isn’t afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve. All she wants is independence from her overbearing mother, and the freedom to shape her own destiny. When she aids a badly beaten man along the side of the road, she may have found more than a dusty cowboy down on his luck.

Morgan’s unshakable belief that Gabe is a good man slowly chisels away the walls he’s built around himself. As he comes to terms with living in the future, he must decide if losing his heart is worth more than holding on to the life he’s led in the past.

Peggy L Henderson is a laboratory technologist by night, and best-selling western historical and time travel romance author of the Yellowstone Romance Series, Second Chances Time Travel Romance Series, and Teton Romance Trilogy. When she’s not writing about Yellowstone, the Tetons, or the old west, she’s out hiking the trails, spending time with her family and pets, or catching up on much-needed sleep. She is happily married to her high school sweetheart. Along with her husband and two sons, she makes her home in Southern California.

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