Romance Sweet Reads: AMITY by Author Linda Carroll-Bradd **Book Birthday** **Prairie Roses Collection 2022**

We’ve arrived at the tenth book in this year’s Prairie Roses Collection, Amity, by Author Linda Carroll-Bradd. Sit back, relax, and take a peek.

Amity Grenville is set on reaching Oregon’s Sweet Home Valley, where her aunt and uncle have a farm. They were part of the Great Migration of 1843, and Amity saved every letter Aunt Beitris wrote, complete with advice on the journey preparations. Amity is eager for a fresh start, in the hopes that her husband, Garvey, will find a new vocation in farming and leave behind his drinking and gambling ways.

Newly finished with his apprenticeship, blacksmith Shawe Creighton can ply his trade just about anywhere so he agrees to throw in with his best friend’s family on the trek to Oregon. With no family ties, he heads west, thinking Oregon is as good as any place to establish a shop. Fun loving by nature, he’s also looking forward to what the adventure will bring.

In St Joseph doing last-minute preparations for the journey, Amity receives the bad news that Garvey was caught cheating and killed over a poker game. Now men are seeking to claim the wagon and team as their recompense. She barely removes her belongings in time but is faced with either marrying a stranger to comply with the wagon train’s rules or remain behind. Taking pity on her plight, Shawe offers marriage and is immediately faced with her two demands--no drinking or gambling. Intrigued by the outspoken woman, he figures the trip won’t be boring. Will a decision made in haste bring disaster, or will the journey forge bonds neither Amity nor Shawe can imagine?

Amity is available exclusively on Kindle Unlimited

Chapter One
North of St. Joseph, MO, April 1851

The cool spring breeze tugged at her skirts and tossed tendrils of her hair across Amity’s cheeks. She straightened from the boiling pot cooking on her sheet metal stove. Swiping the back of a hand over her cheek, she looked south toward town. Canvas-covered wagons of every shape and size side and free-standing tents blocked her view. Still, she hoped for a glimpse of her dark-haired stocky husband riding closer. Her request had only been for half a peck each of carrots and apples. The errand should have taken no more than an hour, and already, he’d been gone for three.

Relocating to Oregon was the only plan she could think of to change the course of their lives. Five years earlier, when her beloved parents died within weeks of each other, she’d turned to their neighbor, Garvey Grenville, for support. Within a month, they married. Other than he’d lived next door for four years, she’d known few other details about her husband. What she soon learned was Garvey’s habit of jumping from job to job, never lasting more than a few months at each. He always had an excuse about the foreman favoring kin or an older worker having seniority or the boss being a stickler for punctuality. In between jobs, he drank and gambled.

When she caught him collecting her late mère’s silver to be pawned, she gave him an ultimatum—move out of the house she inherited or relocate with her to Oregon. In a letter sent after the funerals, Aunt Beitris suggested Amity might be happier on the farm. She added a postscript that Uncle Tulley would welcome the help of a younger man, but it wasn’t essential to the offer. Since then, Amity used her aunt’s letters home—written on the Great Migration of 1843—as a guide for making journey preparations. Now, only a few more days remained until the wagon master, Captain Samuel Russell, deemed the prairie grass well-established enough. The group of thirty wagons needed a guarantee of feed for the animals before starting the arduous, five-month trek.

As a young girl, I spent lots of my free time lying on my bed reading about fascinating characters having exciting adventures in places far away and in other time periods. In later years, I discovered and devoured family saga stories and romance novels. At a certain point, I grew cocky enough to think I could write one of these stories. Then I learned what a balancing act writing a novel is, but I wasn’t deterred. Twelve years later, my first fiction sale was achieved--a confession story.

After reading Debra Holland’s “Montana Sky” series and Caroline Fyffe’s “Prairie Hearts” series, I wanted to try my hand at historicals. I was thrilled to be invited to contribute to Sweetwater Springs Christmas and continued writing in the Montana Sky world by developing my Entertainers of the West series.

Married with 4 adult children and 2 granddaughters, I now write heartwarming contemporary and historical stories with a touch of humor and a bit of sass from my home in the southern California mountains. Lots of my stories are set in Texas where I lived for a dozen years.

Linda's Website ~ Facebook ~ Amazon Author Page ~ Goodreads