Women Historic Western Fiction

New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Chiaverini’s beloved Elm Creek Quilts series here takes listeners back to the Civil War for a powerful tale of husbands, wives, and a nation torn apart. Fervent abolitionism rules the day in 1862 Water’s Ford, Pennsylvania. So when the local men answer Mr. Lincoln’s call to arms, wives are left behind to keep the town functioning. Fortunately, the ladies of Elm Creek Valley have an ingenious plan.

The prairie fires that sweep the grazing lands, the coming of white men with their guns and diseases, and the quick slaughter of the vast buffalo herds leave Running Fawn's Blackfoot tribe with little choice but to take up residence on the assigned Reserve. All her life, Running Fawn has known only contentment, but now what will become of her hopes and dreams?

In 1873, a Cheyenne chief offers President Grant the opportunity to exchange one thousand horses for one thousand White women, in order to marry them with his warriors and create a lasting peace. These women, "recruited" by force in the penitentiaries and asylums of the country, gradually integrate the way of life of the Cheyenne, at the time when the great massacres of the tribes begin.

After their mother dies, Haidie Richards and her younger brother, Boots, are put to work in an orphanage. Their father left four years earlier to find a gold mine in Colorado Territory, and since then he’s sent only three letters. Still, Haidie is certain that he is alive, has struck gold, and will soon send for them. But patience is not one of Haidie’s virtues and soon she and her brother make a break for it. Boots and Haidie, disguised as a boy, embark on a dangerous journey deep into Western territory.

It is New York, 1904, and Dulcy Remfrey, despite an idiosyncratic, traveling childhood, faces the predictable life of a woman of the time. But all that changes when her eccentric father returns from his expedition to Africa without any of the proceeds from the sale of a gold mine. It seems he's lost his mind along with the money, and Dulcy's obsessive ex-fiancé (and her father's business partner) insists she come to Seattle to decipher her father's cryptic notebooks, which may hold clues to the missing funds.

1916. The two-street town of Wallace is not exactly what Ellen Webster had in mind when she accepted a teaching position in Wyoming, but within a year’s time she’s fallen in love—both with the High Plains and with a handsome cowboy named Charlie Bacon. Life is not easy in the flat, brown corner of the state where winter blizzards are unforgiving and the summer heat relentless. But Ellen and Charlie face it all together, their relationship growing stronger with each shared success, and each deeply felt tragedy.

Colorado, 1918. World War I is raging overseas, but it’s the home front battling for survival. With the Spanish Flu rampant, Denver’s schools are converted into hospitals, churches and funeral homes are closed, and nightly horse-drawn wagons collect corpses left in the street. Sisters Helen and Lutie have moved to Denver from Ohio after their parents’ death. Helen, a nurse, and Lutie, a carefree advertising designer at Neusteter’s department store, share a small, neat house and each finds a local beau—for Helen a doctor, for Lutie a young student who soon enlists.

Logan Huett is a former army scout who discovers magnificent Sycamore Cañon in central Arizona, where he intends to homestead. With some trepidation, he wires East to the woman he had courted back in Missouri, proposing marriage. Lucinda Baker, a schoolteacher, accepts. But pioneer life proves very hard for her. Living is crude. She helps in the building of what will be their home but finds the loneliness where they have settled oppressive. The dangers are many and constant. But despite the hardships, despite the dangers, Lucinda remains strong.

Banished by her grandfather at the age of 18, Spring Lee has survived scandal to claim her own little slice of Paradise, Wyoming. She’s proud of working her ranch alone and unwilling to share it with a stranger - especially one like Garrett McCray, who makes her second-guess her resolve to avoid men. Garrett escaped slavery years ago and is now a reporter in Washington. He’s traveled west to interview Dr. Colton Lee for an article, yet it’s Lee’s fearless sister, Spring, who captures his interest.

It's February, 1852, and all around Chicago, Maggie sees postings soliciting "eligible women" to travel to the gold mines of Goosetown. A young seamstress with a small daughter, she has nothing to lose. She joins 43 other women and two pious reverends on the dangerous 2,000-mile journey west. None are prepared for the hardships they face on the trek or for the strengths they didn't know they possessed. Maggie discovers she’s not the only one looking to leave dark secrets behind.

When Faith married her husband Roger Nolan he seemed to be an upstanding businessman, owner of a remote mercantile outside the town of Bountiful, Oregon. But Faith quickly learned the truth - that her husband is dishonest in his business practices and likes his liquor, turning mean when he indulges. When Faith discovers that Roger has yet again failed to deliver critical winter supplies to Nathan Bartlett, owner of the nearby logging camp, she takes the order up the mountain herself. Furious, Roger confronts Faith when she returns, and she is knocked unconscious.

A woman of courage makes an epic journey.

Take a 3,000-mile journey with Amanda Pearson as she leaves the disgrace of a broken engagement and joins the work at a Quaker mission in the western wilds. The trip is fraught with danger, and Amanda is near death before reaching her destination. Among those she meets are an Indian woman who becomes her first convert and a half-Indian trapper who seems to be her biggest critic. But love follows her into the wilderness and will determine the course of her future. You are sure to enjoy this historical romance adventure from New York Times best-selling author Wanda E. Brunstetter.

Included is the newly-written sequel, Woman of Hope, with Little Fawn’s story.

Raised as an orphan by a loving white couple, Little Fawn always felt something was missing from her life. She longs to take the news of Jesus to the Nez Perce Indians, but despite being a missionary herself, Little Fawn’s mother forbids it. Will White Wolf, her intended, support Little Fawn’s decision when she abruptly follows the tribe’s migration onto the Plains?

It's 1905, and the new century overflows with opportunities for the smart, the strong, the confident, and the determined. All words that describe Hope Birdwell to a T. Her first 20 years had their share of trouble and torment, but she's certain the next 20 hold only promise. Hope leaves her past behind and heads for Wyoming to take up homesteading. Never mind that she's alone in the world and has never known a real home in her life. Her name is Hope, and she's sure that a bright and independent future waits right around the corner.

Skye McQuarry's heart belongs to one man: Primrose Creek's lumber baron, Jake Vigil. After a shattering heartbreak in his past, Jake vowed to never again take a chance on love - until he came to know beautiful Skye. But their delicate bond faces the ultimate test when a business deal threatens to tear them apart, and battle lines are drawn between two passionate hearts. Skye is determined to stand her ground. Then a surprise from Jake's past unexpectedly comes to her - a discovery that may be just the key to unlocking true, deep, and trusting love.

An elegant jewel from an English finishing school, Christy McQuarry was bound to turn heads when she and her younger sister, Megan, came to settle in Primrose Creek. Town marshall Zachary Shaw knows that Christy sees what few men in the rugged pioneer town can provide: a secure future and a comfortable home. But he is not immune to Christy's charms.

When Bridget McQuarry comes to settle in Primrose Creek, she has nothing to lose; her husband, Mitch, was killed in the Civil War, and she has lost her family farm to ruinous Reconstruction taxes. With her baby son and a sister to care for, Bridget vows to make a new start out West. But when Mitch's best friend reappears in her life, he sparks a forbidden passion she thought was forever buried.

Sienna Lewis knows firsthand about being an Aussie battler, but she has her beautiful daughter, Zara, to keep fighting for. One day she dreams of giving Zara the life and big family she deserves. For now, Sienna can only focus on her work at the hospital. But when she connects with a new patient who has driven away nearly everyone in his life, she is astounded when he leaves her his sprawling Far-North Queensland property.

Josephine Wesley is a 17-year-old girl who is left for dead in the middle of the Rocky Mountains during the winter. Her house was ransacked and burned by a rogue band of Arapaho Indians in the 1860s. Her father was killed during the raid, and Josephine, her mother, and siblings were kidnapped. While traveling with the Indians, Josephine falls off her horse and is left behind. Her isolated experience of survival begins with the first night of fighting off freezing temperatures and a pack of wolves.

On the cusp of thirty, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients’ trauma lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she too, is suffering. Tragic events from her youth have left a terrible, unseen mark. When a dangerous encounter with the man she’s dating triggers a wave of fragmented recollections, Whitney embarks on a journey to reclaim her memories and the truth that is buried deep in her early years growing up in Kumasi, Ghana during the 1990s.

Arizona Territory, 1871. Valeria Obregon and her ambitious husband, Raúl, arrive in the raw frontier town of Tucson hoping to find prosperity. Changing Woman, an Apache spirit who represents the natural order of the world and its cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, welcomes Nest Feather, a twelve-year-old Apache girl, into womanhood in Aravaipa Canyon.