Katherine's Arrangement

By Blossom Turner

Description:

Marrying him is her only choice to save her family, but Josiah Richardson isn’t at all the man she expected.

Katherine Williams’s family was left destitute when their home was burned to the ground by Yankee soldiers, so the ready solution presented by the prominent Mr. Josiah Richardson seems almost too good to believe. He’ll provide a home, work for her pa, and a new beginning for her family...if only Katherine will accept his proposal. A marriage of convenience is the last thing she wants, but there doesn’t seem to be a better option for her family or herself. Setting aside her dreams of love, Katherine agrees to the arrangement.

The gentleman in Josiah Richardson can no more force his frightened bride into his bed, than he can force her into loving him, so he sets out to gently woo her. He works hard to befriend her, to earn her trust and win her love.

Katherine is pleasantly surprised to find herself drawn to the man she thought she would never love, until an unexpected friendship tears apart all they’ve worked for. Where once the promise of love had budded between Josiah and Katherine, now they wonder what to do with their so-called marriage. Is love strong enough to weave its healing power through two broken hearts?

Book Takeaway:

Sometimes life takes us on down a path we would not choose, (like Katherine's arranged marriage in this story)...only to find God had a plan bigger than ours.

Awards:

Why the author wrote this book:

Long before I even knew I could write, I loved to read. Being a hopeless romantic I gravitated to all romance stories either contemporary or historical. I soon realized that finding clean fiction but still written with the passion of love that God created humans for, was hard to find. (Just read Song of Solomon, God was not afraid to express passion without being explicit.)

Given the gift of a writing career late in life one thing was for sure…I wanted to write clean romance, with a Godly message, but realistic romance depicting real passion. My favorite theme was an arranged marriage…so birthed the first book of the Shenandoah Brides that morphed into a series of 5 sisters and their 5 love stories. August 4th, 2020 is launch day for book one, and every six months thereafter another book in the series will be available.

What better more realistic setting for an arranged marriage than the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, set post-civil war. The valley was hit with the worst of the war and Sheridan’s troops literally burnt down civilian home, crops, barns etc. to cut off the supply of food to the South.
Now I am not a war buff. I write love stories not war stories, so this is set right after the war.

The heroine Katherine is a strong, feisty, beautiful woman thrust into an arranged marriage to a wealthy man to save the plight of her family. Their home was one of those burned and they were left destitute. In enters the handsome hero, the older gentle giant Josiah Richardson…all the fixings for a great story plot with many twists and turns and lots of drama.

Silly me, that is how I began writing historical fiction because I wanted a realistic story plot for an arranged marriage. Wow, I did not know what I was in for. Firstly, I’m Canadian, so a trip to the Shenandoah Valley was a must. Then lots of reading on the American history, civil war, plight of the freed slaves, and whether or not the word “sandwich” was used in 1865. (It was not. LOL)

However, I got the bug, and historical fiction is what I am going to keep writing. At the ripe old age of 58, I finally know what I was born to do.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the read as much as I enjoyed the write.