The Quivera Trail

Where lies escape? How far would you go, just to get away? If you were desperate, would you marry a stranger? Follow him to Texas? Isobel Lindsay-Groves has everything a well-born young Englishwoman of 1876 should have—wealth, a title, a noble heritage, and every luxury that her position in society permits, save one; a decent proposal of marriage, after a disastrous debut. Her domineering mother is furious with her daughter’s failure to marry well, or marry anyone at all. Isobel is plump, socially inept, loves dogs and horses, and wishes wistfully for a quiet and modest country life. Texas cattle rancher Dolph Becker is the answer to a prayer, for he offers all that … but the price for escape from a gilded world of privilege and the casual malice of her mother and Society is to marry a man she barely knows and follow him to Texas; a new life in a strange and violent place, very different from the calm green hills of England. Accompanying Isobel on that journey is Jane Goodacre, her personal maid and confidant. Jane, the daughter of a small country shop-keeper, also has ambitions – and talents that she hardly suspects. The limitations and expectations for a young working-class woman in Victorian England weigh very heavily on Jane, although she does not begin to realize that … until she and her lady mistress arrive in Texas.