The Cold, Cold Ground: A Dark Gothic Western Romance
She came west to marry a gentleman. She fell for the man he hired to tame the land.
Pennsylvania, 1870.
When Hannah Konig's beloved husband dies without warning, the life they built together becomes unbearable. She abandons her isolated community, leaves her name behind, and accepts a marriage proposal from Emry Holladay-a handsome, educated Texas landowner who promises security, purpose, and a new beginning.
But Emry's grand homestead is little more than dry earth and wounded pride. The only reason it has survived at all is Bernard "Birdy" Johnson, a Black Union veteran, former sharpshooter, and gifted horseman who knows how to coax life from stubborn land.
Birdy has spent years drifting from one job to the next, never staying long enough to become attached. Hannah changes that. Beneath her quiet manner, he recognizes a woman as capable, lonely, and haunted as he is. Working side by side, they begin building the home Emry only knows how to claim-and a love neither of them can safely admit.
Because Emry is watching.
As failed crops, mounting debts, and humiliation strip away his polished charm, Hannah discovers that a respectable husband can be more dangerous than any outlaw. And when possession turns to violence, Birdy must decide whether saving her is worth becoming the killer he swore the war had left behind.
On a frontier where the law belongs to white men and marriage can become a prison, loving the wrong person could cost Hannah and Birdy everything.
Cold Cold Ground is a dark, explicit Gothic Western romance featuring a grieving widow, a battle-scarred cowboy, a disastrous mail-order marriage, forbidden interracial love, forced proximity, shared labor, coercive control, and a hard-won happily ever after.
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