A CREED COUNTRY CHRISTMAS

Author: Linda Lael Miller ISBN: 9780373774050 11/2009 HISTORICAL Publisher: HQN
Time Period: 1910

In the unforgiving Montana wilderness of 1910, widowed rancher Lincoln Creed is up against more than rustlers, wolves and the coming winter storms. His young daughter has needs beyond the beans and bacon he can barely cook. Lincoln must find little Gracie a governess, a lady who can teach and cook—yet won't set her sights on him. Disowned for her refusal to marry, twenty-five-year-old Juliana Mitchell shares the love in her heart with her young students at the underfunded Indian school. When she meets Lincoln and Gracie, her response to the handsome rancher makes her realize she's not against marriage after all. She longs to help, yet the orphaned children in her care need her. But in the season for miracles, Providence just might find a way to bring Juliana, the boys and the Creed family together for Christmas Eve....

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Linda Lael Miller sets her western romance A CREED COUNTRY CHRISTMAS (a prequel to the Montana Creeds series) in 1910 Montana, where widowed rancher Lincoln Creed waits for women to answer his newspaper advertisement for a wife. When he’s about to give up, 25-year old Juliana Mitchell and a group of children from the Indian School, which has just been closed, nearly fall into his lap, or at least his wagon—homeless, hungry, tired, and on the outs with the law. Lincoln sees the bigger picture right away and hopes he can convince Juliana to go along with his plan in order to save both her and the children from prison, the poor house, or worse.

Miller really knows the harshness of the Old West, especially of winter in Montana where ranchers could freeze on the way to the house from the barn, cattle could starve standing on top of feed they can’t reach through the snow, and the fortitude it takes to stick it out in such a hostile environment only to have the summers turn hot and dry, destroying hard-earned crops. Juliana is one of those stalwarts. Turned out of her family home when she was a teen because she refused to marry her brother’s business partner, she has made the most of a tough situation by teaching in a school for Indian children ripped from their families. Her last hope when the school closed (leaving her with children she was supposed to send on to yet another school unprepared to teach them) was to convince her brother to send her some of her inheritance so she could care for the children until she could send them to their own families. Her brother stubbornly refuses, and ever pragmatic, Juliana accepts Lincoln’s offer of a warm place to live until all the details get ironed out. Neither of them counted on falling in love, nor did they ever imagine that her boss from the Bureau of Indian Affairs would seek her out quite so quickly.

A CREED COUNTRY CHRISTMAS is a gentle romance, a heartwarming Christmas tale, and a realistic look at our Wild West past—all rolled into one. I really love a holiday story that tugs at my heart, and Miller comes through every time!

Susan Barton