A Valley Too Far

Widow Catrina Davis lies scalped amid the ashes of her frontier home. Death seems fitting and even welcome, but concern for her abducted daughter and grandson forces her to rise and seek help. She reels toward Fort Bigham, finding it--days later--engulfed in flames. Scots-Irish trader Stewart Buchanan collects the lost and unwanted. He saved his Seneca housemaid from the Allegheny River and his apprentice from an asylum. Now fate gifts him with a new mouth to feed--an Irish-hating widow discovered outside Fort Bigham. He finds her sharp tongue oddly charming, a matter complicating his plan to marry a girl whose dowry he desperately needs. When Catrina's pleas to save her loved ones fall on deaf ears, she trades petticoats for breeches to launch a rescue mission of her own. Fueled by a mother's unwavering love and bent on revenge, she confronts the frontier, unaware she's only steps ahead of a thousand provincial guns--including Stewart's--and about to get caught up in a bloody battle of the French and Indian War. In a journey fraught with peril, it's the untamed wilderness of the heart that proves more dangerous to cross.