A Hopeful Heart » (Large Prin)

Kim Vogel Sawyer is the author of fourteen novels, including several bestsellers. In her spare time, she enjoys drama, quilting, and calligraphy. She and her husband, Don, reside in Central Kansas, and have three daughters and six grandchildren.

Dowryless and desperate, Tressa Neill applies to the inaugural class of Wyatt Herdsman School in Barnett, Kansas, in 1888. The school's one-of-a-kind program teaches young women from the East the skills needed to become a rancher--or the wife of one. Shy and small for her twenty-two years, Tressa is convinced she'll never have what it takes to survive Hattie Wyatt's hands-on instruction in skills such as milking a cow, branding a calf, riding a horse, and cooking up a mess of grub for hungry ranch hands. But what other options does she have?

Abel Samms wants nothing to do with the group of potential brides his neighbor brought to town. He was smitten with an eastern girl once--and he got his heart broken. But there's something about quiet Tressa and her bumbling ways that makes him take notice. When Tressa's life is endangered, will Abel risk his own life--and his heart--to help this eastern girl?

Publishers Weekly

Romance writer and author of 14 novels, Sawyer has written another tenderhearted tale, this one set in Barnett, Kans., in 1888. When widowed Hattie Wyatt opens a school for young women to learn the skills needed to be a rancher—or rancher’s wife—22-year-old orphan Tressa Neill becomes one of Hattie’s first students. Initially an unwilling participant forced to enroll in Hattie’s school by her aunt and uncle, the shy Tressa eventually warms to her environment. She applies herself to her studies and is soon intrigued by Abel Samms, a bachelor whose heart was broken by a girl who, like Tessa, came from the east. Encountering various dangers, Tressa and Abel are soon thrust into one another’s company by no design of their own, and a mutual attraction blossoms that neither can ignore. Sawyer’s fan base will appreciate this latest work for its heart, yet they may well be disappointed by its lack of depth or freshness. (June)