Cornucopia Press

A Port in the Storm

Coming October 1

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Summary

Embroiled in scandal, Margaret is forced to flee the comforts of her 1885 Boston home, and seek sanctuary in the young Wyoming Territory. A klutzy but pampered socialite, Meg is ingenuous, spunky, and hell-bent on having her own way. She settles into her new routine as the village schoolmarm, even as she wreaks havoc on the routines of those around her.

She crosses swords with the school board, passes out cold from too much spiked punch at a barn dance, and ends up nose to nose with a rattlesnake. Although she displays a photograph of the man she left behind, she indulges in a mild flirtation with the ranch’s heir, and exchanges verbal blows with the standoffish ranch foreman.

Enmeshed in a ranching world fighting to save its way of life, Meg must count on her wits, her independence and her values to help her find her own port in the storm.

Excerpts

“Oh, my stars and garters!” Margaret Ward, bouncing around inside the big Concord stagecoach like some child’s marble rattled back and forth in a glass jar, clung desperately to the leather hand strap and prayed for deliverance.

She was hot, she was tired, and she was beginning to feel just the teensiest bit testy. What had her father been thinking, to banish her to this no-man’s-land at the far ends of the earth? And with so little preparation, besides!

The groundswell of gritty gray dust that had rolled in to coat her hair, her skin, and, very likely, both corseted lungs, only added to her lengthening list of grievances. Late summer dust was one of many signs of drought in this part of Wyoming Territory, had she cared enough to notice.

But Margaret, fresh from the moneyed, crowded security of Boston’s Back Bay, felt too miserable to notice anything of her surroundings. How many hours had she been held prisoner in this hell-wagon, anyway? And how much longer before she could escape from its hard-cursing, whip-cracking, tobacco-chewing driver cemented to the box overhead?