A Life Once Dreamed

RACHEL FORDHAM

Stats for my copy: Trade paperback, Revell, 2020.

How acquired: Recieved from the publisher for review via the Revell Reads Blogger Program. 

(For the Goodreads synopsis, scroll to the bottom of this post.)

My thoughts: Six years ago Aggie's childhood sweetheart, James, proposed to her, and when she rushed home to tell her parents, they revealed a secret they had been keeping from her. Distraught, she broke the engagement and fled the big city for the small town of Penance, where she now teaches school. We, the reader, aren't told that secret until well into the book, though it wasn't too hard to eventually guess. And then James shows up in town, having been hired to be the new town doctor.

After a fire leaves a little boy orphaned, Aggie takes him in and falls in love with him, and is determined to keep him. But you know what high standards schoolteachers were kept to back in the day – if she has a child, she loses her teaching contract and her home.

I loved this book. The characters are all so well written, even the supporting characters. Aggie's love for her students and the town shines through, and the arrival of James leaves her a bit unsettled. And poor James, his frustration is almost palpable as he tries to find out why Aggie broke their engagement before it had hardly started. And then there's Sam, one of the miners who comes into town fairly frequently and is smitten with Aggie. I was rooting for him almost as much as for James. True to small town dynamics, everybody is all up in everybody else's business, and Aggie's friends and the mayor pushing her to pick a husband and settle down was amusing.

Ms. Fordham writes beautifully, with the narrative seamlessly switching between the points of view of Aggie and James, letting us get know each of them. James, especially, grows as a character, from feeling that he may be in over his head as a town doctor when he's fresh out of medical school, to learning to love the small town that he had expected to be a temporary part of his life. I loved watching his views and ideas change as he began to love the town and its inhabitants as much as he still loved Aggie.

If you're a fan of When Calls the Heart, I believe you'll enjoy this story. I know I did, very much.

Goodreads synopsis: Six years ago, a shocking secret sent Agnes Pratt running in search of a new start. She found it in Penance, a rugged town of miners and lumberjacks in the Dakota Territory, where she became Miss Aggie, respected schoolteacher and confirmed old maid. But the past has a way of catching up with people.

When childhood friend and former sweetheart James Harris accepts a position as the town doctor, Aggie's pleasantly predictable days suddenly become anything but. James wants to know why Agnes left behind the life they had dreamed of creating for themselves--but he is the one person who can never know.

In the shadows of the Black Hills, can a healing light be shed on the past? Or will the secret Agnes can't seem to outrun destroy her chance at happiness?

Fan-favorite Rachel Fordham brings to life the dusty streets of an 1880s frontier town in this story that affirms where you come from matters far less than where you're going.