She had bought wrapping paper by the pound for three years, because that is how her husband bought it and a tool shop wraps everything in newsprint. Breaking a bundle open on her sister's kitchen table in March, she came to a weekly out of Helena that was seven months old, and she read it because it was in her hands.
Gideon Ammons is the blacksmith at Cedar Bend, Montana Territory. His letters are four lines long and they arrive on time. They say what the work is, what the house is, and what he can offer, and not one word more than that.
She takes them for reticence. She is a widow who travels light on principle and she has decided that reticence is survivable.
What she does not know yet is why the letters are short - that print turns under his eyes and iron never has, and that everything he has not been able to write down he has been saying for years in what he makes.
A clean, closed-door mail-order bride western about a marriage begun on four short letters, a man who says everything with his hands, and a widow who came west with one trunk. Faith, courage and a happy ending.
Book 1 of Brides of Cedar Bend. Each book follows a new couple and can be read on its own.