Patience’s story begins with an unspeakable event as she approaches the age of sixteen. On her own, except for her horse, Logan, she is no easy victim. She capably picks up her daddy’s deer rifle, mounts her pony and takes revenge.
Raised by a father whose words were spare, she too, chooses her words carefully, unless visceral reaction overcomes her. Like her dear Pa, her aim is true, her seat in the saddle superb and her code of honor set in cement. When circumstances show her there are other ways of being, she is ultimately able to weigh the right and wrong of it in order to adjust this code.
In her observance of men and their world, modest Patience slowly discovers the innate power of her gender and instead of discarding it, or succumbing to it, she plays her card well, with results which, like a new toy, amuse her and charm the recipient.
Patience is part alter ego and part my antecedents; part truth and part fiction. She lightly brushes her tattered petticoats along the fringes of 1860 history on her journey of action adventure and self-discovery. Blessed with a good and moral heart and her magnificent Morgan stallion; extraordinary skills and a proud and reckless daring, she pays a dear price for her independent and stubborn nature.
Like her young country, she comes to value freedom above all. But this is not a time when women were allowed to roam freely in a savage new man’s world. They were chattels and vessels of new life. One misstep brought rejection by society, danger at every turn and a devastating loneliness.
In spite of this, it seems a quintessential and logical choice to Patience. No drudge to a man, and no terrors of the childbed for her. Now if she can just resist the enigmatic Kadefor one.
