BooksChatter: ☀ Wagon Train Sisters: Women of the West [2]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Wagon Train Sisters, a Western Historical Romance by Shirley Kennedy (19 July 2016, Lyrical Press, 210 pages).

This is the second book in the Women of the West series.

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below. Read the first chapter with Amazon Look Inside.

Author Shirley Kennedy will be awarding a digital copy of Women of the West to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀).

Synopsis | Teaser | The Series | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

Synopsis

After the death of her abusive husband, Sarah Gregg is free to join her family along with thousands of others in the nation’s westward march for gold. But in the middle of the hard journey, Sarah’s younger sister, Florrie, disappears. Devastated by the family’s failed attempts to find her missing sister, Sarah now wants only to settle into a quiet, uneventful life when she reaches California . . .

But Jack McCoy, a drifter and one-time gambler riding along their wagon train, sees so much more for Sarah. In the roaring mining town of Gold Creek his attentive persistence points Sarah toward new vistas. Then unexpected news of Florrie arrives—and it’s worse than anyone expected. But driven by a new hopefulness, Sarah seeks help from Jack, despite his troubled past. The two have traveled a rough road together, and only their hearts can tell them where they are headed . . .

Teaser: Excerpt

     When Sarah lugged her bagful of laundry back to her family’s wagon, she half expected Florrie to be waiting, but she wasn’t in sight. Ma was fixing supper, grunting with pain as she bent over the campfire. Sarah hastily set down the laundry and took the poker from her mother’s hand. “Is your rheumatism acting up? Here, let me do that. You go rest. Have you seen Florrie?”
      Luzena Bryan frowned with concern. “No I haven’t. I was beginning to worry, but then I decided she must be with you.”
      “I haven’t seen her for hours.”
      “Then she must have gone visiting one of the wagons.”
      “Of course. She’ll be back any minute.” As Sarah bent to stir the pot of beans hanging over the campfire, a faint quiver of worry coursed through her. Florrie never did anything out of the ordinary. She would never disappear like this. Twenty-three and still unmarried, she didn’t have a whole lot of friends, nor did she seem to want any. Back home in Fort Wayne, she hardly went anywhere except church. Aside from helping with the housework, she spent her time producing bumpy needlepoint canvases and reading romantic, derring-do novels by the likes of Mrs. Southworth and Mrs. Wilson. No gentleman ever came calling, which Florrie said was fine with her, but Sarah knew otherwise. Florrie was no great beauty. In a rare moment of honesty, she once complained to Sarah, “God gave you the beautiful eyes and the nice little nose and the curvy figure, but me? God made me ugly, and don’t tell me otherwise.”
      Sarah had hastened to reassure her younger sister with, “Beauty is only skin deep,” and other useless platitudes. The truth was God had given Florrie a chin too weak, lips too thin, eyes too close together and a chest too flat. All of which wouldn’t have mattered had she possessed the kind of bubbly charm that made men overlook such imperfections, but she didn’t. Men never looked twice at Florrie Bryan. Her plodding gait, dumpy figure, and lack of sparkling conversation turned them away.
      Her family cared deeply for her, though. No one could have a more generous heart or be more loyal than Florrie. Now, as the sun sank ever lower on the horizon, the Bryans finished their dinner while sitting around their campfire, discussing her disappearance with growing concern. “She’s the last person on this train who’d do this,” said Hiram, her brother. He looked toward the tall trees surrounding them and the mountain peaks beyond. “Where would she go? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Wagon Train Sisters
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The Series: Women of the West

Click on the book cover to Look Inside the book on Amazon and read an excerpt.

Wagon Train Cinderella [1]

Love can lead you out of the wilderness… 1851, Overland Trail to California. As a baby, Callie was left on the doorstep of an isolated farmhouse in Tennessee. The Whitaker family took her in, but have always considered her more a servant than a daughter. Scorned by her two stepsisters, Callie is forced to work long hours and denied an education. But a new world opens to her when the Whitakers join a wagon train to California—guided by rugged Luke McGraw…

A loner, haunted by a painful past, Luke plans to return to the wilderness once his work is done. But he can’t help noticing how poorly Callie is treated—or how unaware she is of her beauty and intelligence. As the two become closer over the long trek west, Callie’s confidence grows. And when disaster strikes, Callie emerges as the strong one—and the woman Luke may find the courage to love at last…

75,613 Words

[Published 3 February 2015, 202 pages]

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About the Author

Shirley Kennedy was born and raised in Fresno, California.

In her early career as an author, Shirley wrote traditional Regency romances, one for Ballantine, the rest for Signet. Later on, she branched into other genres.

She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her older daughter, Dianne, and Brutus and Sparky, her two editorial assistants who love to nap in the sunshine next to her computer while she works on her next book.

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