Westward Hope: an Oregon Trail Historical
Romance
Kathleen D Bailey
Buy on Amazon
Historical Shorter Romance – 181 pp.
Christian Fiction
Ebook $5.99
Print $15.99
About
the Book
Why him? Why here? Why now?
Caroline Pierce O'Leary expects to work hard to earn her passage to the Oregon Country. She doesn't expect to find that the wagon train scout is a man with whom she shares a troubled past. Though Caroline is a Christian now, thanks to her late husband, she finds forgiving Michael to be the hardest part of her journey, harder even than the Trail.
Michael Moriarty thought he'd left his past behind in "green and hurting Ireland." Seeing Caroline on his wagon train brings his past to the forefront. With a price on his head, he doesn't want her to get hurt, but he can't deny what they were...and could still be.
Michael once betrayed Caroline in the worst possible way. Can she trust him to get her across the Oregon Trail? Can he trust himself to accept her forgiveness and God's?
Caroline Pierce O'Leary expects to work hard to earn her passage to the Oregon Country. She doesn't expect to find that the wagon train scout is a man with whom she shares a troubled past. Though Caroline is a Christian now, thanks to her late husband, she finds forgiving Michael to be the hardest part of her journey, harder even than the Trail.
Michael Moriarty thought he'd left his past behind in "green and hurting Ireland." Seeing Caroline on his wagon train brings his past to the forefront. With a price on his head, he doesn't want her to get hurt, but he can't deny what they were...and could still be.
Michael once betrayed Caroline in the worst possible way. Can she trust him to get her across the Oregon Trail? Can he trust himself to accept her forgiveness and God's?
My
Review
Authentic picture of life on the
trail. Bailey offers readers of inspirational romantic historical fiction a
bittersweet picture gleaned from stories, journals, biographies, and photos of
cross country travelers venturing west from Missouri in the mid nineteenth
century.
There’s a lot going on in this mite
of a story—longer than a novella but shorter than typical. A widow on her last
half-bag of flour sells her farm and joins a wagon train to Oregon Country,
only to find one of the leaders is a former lover with a price on his head.
Complicating the picture is a hardened young woman running from the sex slave
industry. All these issues come to a head after a several-months’ journey fraught
with ill-will, ill-preparedness, illness, accidents and death. It was a
perilous adventure that sometimes worked out and often didn’t.
Having recently visited several of the
sites from Bailey’s story, I was fascinated and pleased at the depth and
quality of her research and story. The tragedies and dissent tend to outweigh
the hope of the title, but that’s reality. At its heart, the story is one of
forgiveness and trust; of how we deal with what happens to us and choose to
make the best of what we’re given and live out what we believe.
Those who appreciate American historical
fiction with the harshness of reality in their romance along with the
inspirational side of coming to true faith will find much to enjoy in this
well-written book.
About
the Author
Kathleen D Bailey is a freelance and
staff writer with a lifetime devotion to the printed, and now the digital page.
Born in 1951, she was a child in the 50s, a teen in the 60s and 70s and a young
mom in the 80s. It was a turbulent, colorful time to come of
age. She’s enjoyed every minute of it, and written about most of it.
