Back Cover Teaser:

Genieva Bankmans had willfully agreed to the arrangement. She had given her word and she would not dishonor it. But when she saw, for the first time, the man whose advertisement she had answered…she was desperately intimidated. The handsome and commanding Brevan McLean was not what she had expected. He was not the sort of man she had reconciled herself to marrying.

This man, this stranger whose name Genieva now bore, was strong-willed, quick-tempered and expectant of much from his new wife. Brevan McLean did not deny he had married her for very practical reasons only. He merely wanted any woman whose hard work would provide him assistance with the brutal demands of farm life.

But Genieva would learn there were far darker things, grave secrets held unspoken by Brevan McLean concerning his family and his land. Genieva Bankmans McLean was to find herself in the midst of treachery, violence and villainy with her estranged husband deeply entangled in it.

Book Excerpt:

Taking the paper from his shirt pocket, he once more read the most recent letter he’d received from the as yet unseen Miss Genieva Bankmans. Again he noted the neat and immaculately straight-lined penmanship as he read:

Dear Mr. McLean,
I feel, as you do, that this arrangement will be beneficial and satisfactory for both of us. I agree that we, having committed to follow through with the previously corresponded terms, will legally marry upon my arrival next week. I expect nothing from you, save a place of residence, the required necessities of living, hard work to keep my mind and physical being occupied, and respect. I, in turn, will assist you in whatever is required to sustain and maintain your land and crops, while providing meals, doing mending, and fulfilling other non-intimate duties commonly performed by a man’s legal wife. I will arrive in Blue Springs on the 10:00 a.m. train, April 3rd. And finally, to answer your rather unexpected question, I am in no manner averse to immigrants, and I hope you will show the same attitude toward me, being that I am from the eastern United States .

Sincerely,
Genieva Bankmans

Nodding, Brevan returned the paper to his shirt pocket. “Hard-workin’ woman with a sound brain in her head,” he mumbled. Let Brenna nag him ’til her throat was bloody—he knew what he wanted and needed out of life. This Genieva Bankmans would do just fine.