Booklist Review

Peterson launches a new Christian historical romance trilogy when Lizzie realizes, just moments before the wedding, that she can't marry Stuart. Her best friend Deborah invites her to move to Texas, which also allows Lizzie to escape her domineering mother. And when Lizzie meets Deborah's brother at the train station, she realizes that he is a man she can admire and maybe, in time, love. Safely arrived in the sawmill town of Perkinsville, Lizzie settles happily into a traditional domestic role, while Deborah, homesick during her college years, now feels out of place among her uneducated family and neighbors. When she meets the new doctor, however, she finds in him a kindred spirit and struggles between her desire to help her family in their logging business, and her need to learn and practice medicine. Set among the yellow-pine forests of east Texas in 1885, Peterson's engrossing novel subtly raises questions about land stewardship, women's self-determination, and escalating racial tensions, while exploring the role of outsiders in a Southern post-Reconstruction small town.--Welch, Lynne Copyright 2010 Booklist