Lena Nelson Dooley, Love Finds You in Golden, New Mexico

Love Finds You in Golden, New Mexico

Lena Nelson Dooley

Summerside, Jun 2010, $12.99

www.summersidepress.com

ISBN: 9781935416746

In 1890 Golden, New Mexico, elderly and ailing former miner Philip Smith explains to his best friend Jeremiah Dennison why he plans to place an ad in the Boston Globe for a mail-order bride. He has money without family and figures someone can nurse him until he dies or recovers while he would be helping a Lady in desperate straits to take such a position. Jerry tries to talk the man he considers his father out of doing this, but fails.

In Boston, Maddy Mercer grieves the death of her father when his former business partner Horace Johnstone informs her they will marry just like her dad wanted. With a responsibility for a newborn while also loathing the avaricious Horace and knowing she and her baby needed to escape a life of hell if married to him; kind hearted Maddy decides on the unknown. She responds to an ad for a mail-order bride placed in the Globe.

Unable to talk Philip out of doing the insanity, Jeremiah plans to persuade the bride to go home. Then he meets Maddy accompanied by baby Pearl and her devoted servants Frank and Sarah Sneed who nurture a dying Philip like he was their father; not understanding her Massachusetts secret toddles between them.

This is a pure golden historical romance starring a courageous caring woman, a wonderful old man, and the male hunk who loves both of them (and Pearl too). The strong lead cast and solid support characters bring alive the mining town in 1890, but it is the relationships that make for a strong Americana tale. Lena Nelson Dooley writes a warm wonderful winner.

Harriet Klausner