Review: Fresh Premise with Lots to Love
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 4, 2013
Having served as a doctor with the Confederate Army, Captain Jacob Morgan feels as if his very soul is dead:  so much death, so much destruction, so little he could do about it.  Vowing to never practice medicine again, he tucks his presidential pardon into his jacket pocket and leaves his home and what’s left of his family behind, heading for Texas to try to begin a new life.  He hopes that by starting over he will escape the nightmares full of battle-wounded and dying men that plague him every time he closes his eyes.  As he is wearily passing through Kansas, he hears gunshots ring out in a farmyard and against his better judgement, turns his horse and gallops to see if someone needs his help.Clutching her rifle in her shaking hands, Samantha Lowery knows that Landis Moore and his men won’t leave her and her younger brother Will until they get what they want---her land.  The former Confederates have left a path of destruction as they terrorize Union sympathizers and the Lowerys are the latest victims in the gang’s sites.  No matter how much they harass her, Samantha has vowed to never give up the very thing that her abolitionist parents struggled through so many hardships to achieve.  Already losing her father to the murderous gang, Samantha knows she must continue to stand her ground, no matter what comes next.  A few minutes after men trampled her garden and fired their weapons at the house in an attempt to terrorize them yet again, a lone rider rushed into the yard.  Samantha just knew it was one of them coming back to finish what they’d started, so she held her breath and pulled the trigger.Relieved she didn’t kill the man, even if he did ride with Landis,  Samantha was then faced with the dilemma of what to do with him.  Upon closer inspection, he didn’t look quite like the others in Landis’ gang.  For one thing, he was too clean—and handsome.  And he said the oddest things as he thrashed around in his fever.  But his gray uniform pants gave him away as a Rebel, and that could only mean he was there to make trouble.As she nursed him back to health (as she kept him tied up in her barn, of course) she began to wonder if she had been mistaken about his identity.  Maybe he could help?  But she could never ask him—a man who had fought against her friends, family, and the cause she believed in.As Jake struggles to recover, he is puzzled by this woman nursing him back to health.  Who shot him?  It couldn’t have been this little slip of a woman.  And if she DID shoot him, why would she nurse him back to health?  The more he learns about her situation, the more difficult it is for him to turn his back on the beautiful woman and her struggles and leave her behind once he is well enough to do so.They were on opposite sides of the war, but are their differences really too much to overcome?  Is Samantha enough of a reason for Jake to stay, to get involved, to care----instead of continuing his journey?I really liked this book.  It was a fresh premise and never predictable.  The romance itself was very steamy at times, yet never over-the-top.  As soon as I finished this one, I went on to download another written by this author.  Recommended!