Samantha VanHellen is living a privileged but very boring life in Boston. She wants marriage and children, but Charles, the man she once thought she'd be marrying, keeps behaving like he's courting her, and never quite proposing. She's closing in on old maid territory, Charles is also paying court to a much younger woman, and Samantha is tired of being treated as a brainless appendage by both Charles and her father. When she sees an ad for a mail order bride from Beau Tibbets, a man in Cypress Springs, Texas, she decides to respond.
Tom Wilson is a deputy federal marshal in Dry Gulch, Texas, but he's been sent to Cypress Springs to fill in for a marshal who is off visiting his wife's family. Tom is happy to get away from Dry Gulch for a month, because he's feeling increasingly harassed by a widow in town who is a very nice lady, but who is determined that he is going to be her second husband.
When Samantha gets off the train in Cypress Springs, Beau Tibbets is not, as expected, there to meet her. The marshals soon discover that Tibbets is dead--murdered.
What follows is a a criminal investigation intertwined with Samantha and Tom working through their respective romantic issues while also getting acquainted. I don't find Dean's books to be altogether realistic about the American Wild West, but they're not meant to be. This is, per usual for her, a story of likable, believable people having a somewhat storybook romance. You'll feel better at the end. Or at least I do.
Recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
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