Lydia Gray was married off to a much older man when she was only fifteen as part of a business transaction. Since then, she has endured a hellish marriage but now it is all over and both her husband and father are dead. She is a wealthy widow—but the children of Floyd Gray’s first wife have something to say about her inheritance and will contest it, doing anything in their power to get back what they consider theirs. Lydia flees to Alaska, where she has an aunt, to start a new and better life, but the past is going to come back to haunt her with a vengeance.

This is a story about surviving abuse, and finding God when you think that He has abandoned you. Lydia makes for a tough yet tender heroine, and sawmill owner Kjell Lindquist is everything that her first husband was not. She has plenty to endure, but this is not a depressing book; quite the opposite as she and her friends are determined to counter everything that is thrown at them. Rather, I would class it as an exciting book, just the thing, perhaps, for readers who find many romances too idealized and gentle.

Alaska comes to life too as a bold new land for settlers who are determined to give it their all, beautiful, wild and rewarding. If you like historical romance then you ought to love this—I eagerly await the next book in the trilogy.