Lori Copeland, Patience

Patience

Lori Copeland

Tyndale, Feb 2004, $9.99, 318 pp.

ISBN: 0842319387

In 1873 Denver City, Colorado, a kidnapper abducts Patience Smith mistaking her for bride to be Lenore Hawthorn when the good natured lass agreed to don the wedding dress for its final fitting. Sheriff Jay Longer follows knowing the icy wintry mountains makes for a freezing dangerous trek.

Perhaps it is the hand of God, but the horse carrying the thug and Patience missteps throwing both humans to the ground. Patience gets up in an instant and flees into the frozen wasteland. Could God be guiding her for soon she finds shelter in the Mule Head gold mine. Inside she finds eight year old orphan Wilson as cold and scared as she except that Patience believes God is with both of them. They walk the forty-five minute trek to Fiddle Creek. In the town she tries to obtain help with excavating the gold from the mine she just left, but no one will dig in what has been cursed and haunted. When Jay arrives, Patience tries to persuade him to help her and Wilson with the mine. As the believer and the doubter fall in love, Jay wonders how someone so devout and optimistic could care for an acrimonious loner like him. Perhaps that is God's miracle.

Though the pious Pollyanna seems overdone if pure faith can ever be overdone, fans with patience will enjoy this delightful "Brides of the West" novel. The sixth book in the series stars an intriguing lead couple whose belief in God is so opposite that the audience knows that only divine intervention could bring them together in spite of their love for one another. Fans of inspirational western romances will enjoy Lori Copeland's uplifting tale.

Harriet Klausner