Where the Road Bends

 

RACHEL FORDHAM

Stats for my copy: Trade paperback, published 2022 by Revell.

How acquired: From Revell Reads Blogger Program.

First line: The small band on her ring finger glistened in the sunlight as Norah King walked the family land she had nearly lost.

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: I’ve read all but one of Ms. Fordham’s books as they were published. Her first book, THE HOPE OF AZURE SPRINGS, remained my favorite. Until now. I believe WHERE THE ROAD BENDS is my new favorite.

Quincy and Norah are both lost souls, though Quincy much more so. Norah has been struggling to hold onto the family land since her father passed away, and in a last ditch effort to keep the bank from taking it, she is engaged to marry a man she doesn’t love but who has promised to work her land and get the farm back into shape. With no living family, the land Norah grew up on represents home and stability for her, and she is desperate not to lose it.

Quincy has been on his own since he was a young teen, barely supporting himself as a back alley street fighter. Their paths cross when Norah finds him on her farm, beaten and unconscious, and drags him to her home where she nurses him back to health and encourages him to make a better life for himself.

Two years later, Norah’s and Quincy’s lives have both changed dramatically. While neither knows the fate of the other, neither has ever forgotten the other. But Quincy has been carrying around guilt over a secret he kept from Norah, and he sets out to find her again and make things right.

I loved Quincy so much, but at the same time I had mixed feelings about that secret of his and what he did. But he has a good heart, and even the best of us are flawed, and he wanted to set things straight. I also loved Norah. Strong and independent, but living in a time when those values were not traditionally valued in a woman, and circumstances could be hard to rise above. Ms. Fordham’s writing just flows across the page, and even the supporting characters are individual and well written.

A beautifully written story of redemption, of finding one’s place, of letting go of the past and making a better future.

*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher and have voluntarily reviewed it*

Synopsis from Goodreads: As Norah King surveys her family land in Iowa in 1880, she is acutely aware that it is all she has left, and she will do everything in her power to save it--even if that means marrying a man she hardly knows. Days before her wedding, Norah discovers an injured man on her property. Her sense of duty compels her to take him in and nurse him back to health. Little does she realize just how much this act of kindness will complicate her life and threaten the future she's planned.

Norah's care does more than aid Quincy Barnes's recovery--it awakens his heart to possibilities. Penniless and homeless, he knows the most honorable thing he can do is head on down the road and leave Norah to marry her intended. But walking away from the first person to believe in him proves much harder than he imagined. 

Rachel Fordham invites you to experience the strength and beauty of love forged in the crucible of hardship in this heartwarming story.

A Lady in Attendance

 

RACHEL FORDHAM

Stats for my copy: Trade paperback, Revell, June 2021.

How acquired: Revell Reads Blogger Program, for review. 

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: Rachel Fordham has a true talent for creating realistic, fallible characters who are strong yet vulnerable. Hazel was a young, thoughtless and immature girl, whose flirtatious actions led her to a forced marriage, which ended when her husband was murdered and Hazel was sent to reformatory after being found guilty of stealing jewels. A crime of which she was innocent. Five years later she is free and starting her life over. Now, instead of living a pampered existence, she resides in a boarding house for women, and takes a job as a lady in attendance to a dentist to support herself.

I read a lot of romance with alpha heroes - strong, arrogant, masterful men. As much as I love those men (on paper anyway!), its refreshing to read about a hero like Gilbert. Quiet, unassuming, mild-mannered, a bit shy around women and resigned to remaining a bachelor. Hesitant about hiring a woman to work side by side with every day, but having reached a point in his practice where he needs an assistant, he settles on Hazel after she assures him she has “...no motives other than working...ours will be a most proper arrangement.”

I love watching a relationship develop slowly over time, and Ms. Fordham wrote Hazel and Gilbert’s relationship beautifully. There’s no holding hands and flirting, but rather an easy, growing friendship filled with conversation and laughter. Until that scene at - well, I won’t give it all away, but who knew a kiss on the cheek could be so romantic!

The themes of forgiveness and acceptance run throughout the book. Forgiveness of others and of one’s self. Acceptance of others, and of one’s self as a worthy person despite one’s past or flaws, or perceived flaws. Much of Hazel’s character growth occurs off page, during the five years she spends in the reformatory, but we are given enough glimpses at her background to appreciate her growth. Gilbert’s growth is more internal, in that he’s already a good man and an upstanding member of the community. But his personality blossoms more and more thanks to Hazel’s influence, as he becomes more talkative and social, and begins to think maybe there’s more to life than permanent bachelorhood.

This is just such a sweet and engaging story. There’s romance of course, and redemption, and adventure as Hazel and Gilbert and their friends dig deeper into the events surrounding Hazel’s arrest and her husband’s death in an effort to clear her name. I teared up more than once, and it all wrapped up beautifully in the end.

Goodreads synopsis: Five years in a New York state reformatory have left a blemish on Hazel's real name. So when she takes a job as Doctor Gilbert Watts's lady in attendance in 1898, she does so under an alias. In the presence of her quiet and pious employer, Hazel finds more than an income. She finds a friend and a hope that if she can set her tarnished past in order, she might have a future after all.

As Gilbert becomes accustomed to the pleasant chatter of his new dental assistant, he can't help but sense something secretive about her. Perhaps there is more to this woman than meets the eye. Can the questions that loom between them ever be answered? Or will the deeds of days gone by forever rob the future of its possibilities?

Rachel Fordham pens a tender tale of a soft-spoken man, a hardened woman, and the friends that stand by them as they work toward a common purpose--to expunge the record of someone society deemed beyond saving--and perhaps find love along the way.

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.

The Hope of Azure Springs

RACHEL FORDHAM

Goodreads synopsis: Seven years ago, orphaned and alone, Em finally arrived at a new home in Iowa after riding the orphan train. But secrets from her past haunt her, and her new life in the Western wilderness is a rough one. When her guardian is shot and killed, Em, now nineteen, finally has the chance to search for her long-lost sister, but she won't be able to do it alone.

For Azure Springs Sheriff Caleb Reynolds, securing justice for the waifish and injured Em is just part of his job. He's determined to solve every case put before him in order to impress his parents and make a name for himself. Caleb expects to succeed. What he doesn't expect is the hold this strange young woman will have on his heart.

Stats for my copy: Trade paperback, Revell, 2018.

How acquired: Revell Reads Blog Tour Program.

First line: “She dead?”

My thoughts: The only downside to loving a book by a new to you author is realizing that it's a debut novel, and there is no back list to run out and hunt down!

Orphaned at age twelve, Em and her younger sister, Lucy, are put on an orphan train, where they end up being separated. The book opens seven years later, and Em has been found shot and unconscious and taken into Azure Springs. A local couple, Abraham and Abigail Howell, take her into their home to care for her while she recuperates.

Em is such a richly drawn character. We actually start getting to know Caleb, the sheriff, a little sooner than we do Em, since she is bedridden and sleeping a lot in the beginning. Caleb is determined to find the men who shot Em and killed her guardian, and thus he spends some time with Em, questioning her and slowly learning about her life before Azure Springs. He, too, is richly drawn. In fact, while the point of view changes back and forth between Em to Caleb, the supporting characters are still all well fleshed out.

It's not love at first sight, certainly not instalove, which I was very happy about. In fact, Caleb is quite smitten with Eliza, the Howells' oldest daughter, and she definitely has her sights set on him. He looks at Em and sees a waif, a thin, plain looking girl, who he initially mistakes for a child.

And that's a theme of the book. I don't ever get the impression that Em is ugly. But she's not a classic beauty or glamorous looking. Her own view of herself is skewed. Town after town with the orphan train, being overlooked by all the prospective families until most of the other children have been claimed, left her feeling unwanted and self-conscious about herself. As she and Caleb develop a strong friendship, she's grateful for that, but she assumes he won't ever want more than friendship with her. Especially compared to girls like Eliza.

While his pa talked, Caleb envisioned Em's freckled face. “Beauty is something we get to define. We may not see it right away, but when we do, we have trouble even remembering the other definition. We wonder how we were ever so misled. All we can see is the one person who defines it for us.”

That's just a tiny example of the beautiful writing. 

I loved watching Em grow and become more self-confident, falteringly but with self-determination. I loved Em's interactions with the Howells' younger daughters, seven-year old twins. I even enjoyed her interactions with Eliza, the only Howell not to welcome her with open arms, but who instead was snobbish and at times downright rude to Em. In fact, in the middle of one of those passages I wondered if there would be more Azure Springs books, as Eliza seemed like the perfect person to get her own story and have her character redeemed by love. Or even Margaret, a widow who owns a boarding house in town and gives Em her first paid job, and becomes a dear friend while imparting words of wisdom. And then I set the book down to see if the author was active on Goodreads, so I could ask her if there were going to be more Azure Springs books. She responded: “My second book is stand alone but the characters do pass through Azure Springs and we get to see lots of characters from The Hope of Azure Springs in it.” I'm already excited for that next book to come out!

When Em finally has the chance to travel to the town where she and her sister had been separated, I cried for several pages. A beautiful story, beautifully written, and emotionally satisfying.