Willamette Brides

Portland, Oregon, 1879. Nancy Pritchard finds herself a widow with a world of problems when her deceased husband's schemes start to come to light. As she searches through the pieces of her loveless marriage, Nancy realizes there is a lot that she didn't know about this man. Seth Carpenter is a childhood friend of Nancy's who has recently returned to Portland. He's delighted to see her again, and as a lawyer, he is able to help her sort through the legal aspects of her husband's death. But there's more to him than meets the eye, and his job will take him into a darker side of Nancy's life-a side she didn't even know existed. As they search for the truth behind her husband's death, their attraction to each other creates complications, and the threat to Nancy increases. Can Seth be honest with her about who he really is and why he's come to Portland? And can Nancy bear another betrayal?

Newly arrived in Portland to finish her studies as a doctor at Willamette Universitys medical college, thirty-year old Faith Kenner is glad to be near family again at her cousin Nancy’s boardinghouse. But the proximity is bittersweet, stirring up the desire for a family of her own a longing that the secrets she harbors will never permit. When she stumbles into handsome riverboat captain Andrew Gratton, who has been injured defending a Native working on his ship, she surprises him by expertly tending his wound and praising his conviction. A fast friendship forms, but Faith is careful to quell her hopes for something more. Instead, she joins her fellow students in putting together lectures to speak out against Oregons racist laws and policies actions that garner the dangerous attention of powerful men who have other plans for their state. Soon Faith is caught in the middle of a plot to push the local Indian tribes to rebel, and her family is threatened. Will the harm these men intend be her undoing, or is it simply the mysterious path God has her on to bring the truth and her hearts desires to light?

After years of schooling on the East Coast, Constance Browning returns to Oregon and the reservation where she grew up with her missionary parents. She is accompanied by Thomas Lowell, her best friend and colleague, and together they embark on a project to catalogue the native peoples of Oregon for the Bureau of American Ethnology. But Connie and Tom have another purpose--to prove her parents are not involved in a secret conspiracy to goad the oppressed tribes into a doomed war. Connie finds life on the reservation much bleaker than she remembered, and she is glad to have Tom by her side. But she also becomes reacquainted with Clint Singleton, the government agent on whom she had a crush as a girl. Now that she's back, Clint finally seems interested in her, but Connie is no longer sure of her feelings. As tensions on the reservation rise and war looms ever closer, Connie and Tom search for whoever is truly behind the uprising. With danger unfolding amid shocking revelations, Connie will also have a revelation of the heart.