Summer Moon Book

Acclaimed author Jill Marie Landis has gifted readers with award-winning love stories that express the most intimate longings of the human heart. With unique insight and irresistible wit, she breathes vivid life into her characters while depicting superb settings of stunning beauty and realism. Now, in her long-awaited hardcover debut, Jill Marie Landis tells the tender tale of a woman without choices who risks everything for one last chance at happiness.

RANCHER SEEKING WIFE. For Kate Whittington, the modest words of a newspaper ad are the answer to her desperate prayers. Daughter of a dockside harlot and raised in a bleak orphanage, she has no prospects in the unforgiving Maine village of her birth. Correspondence from the lonely Texas widower looking for a mail-order bride sparks tempting dreams of a house, a family, and a future in a land filled with possibilities.

Kate arrives at the magnificent Lone Star Ranch eager to meet her new husband. Instead she is greeted by the news that Reed Benton has been wounded during a raid on a Comanche village and has returned with a prisoner—a wild-looking young boy who may be his long lost son. Even more shattering, however, is the fact that Reed has never heard of Kate, never wrote the searing letters that charmed her heart.

Reed Benton doesn't want a wife. But he does need someone to look after the boy—a bitter reminder of a past ravaged by lies and betrayal. It will take a miracle to heal these two damaged souls . . . or the faith of one woman with nothing left to lose but her heart.

Summer Moon is a deeply moving story of broken promises and new beginnings, crafted by a true master of romantic fiction.

Library Journal

Abandoned by her prostitute mother, raised by nuns, and cast adrift at 29, teacher Kate Whittington impulsively answers a newspaper ad and leaves her native Maine for the sun-drenched, windswept plains of Texas to marry a man she has never met a man who, it turns out, was set up by his estranged father, has never heard of Kate, and definitely doesn't want a wife. But Reed Benton has little choice he is wounded, and the wild son he reclaimed from the Comanche needs care and so Kate stays, determined to fight for her dreams. A heroine seeking a new beginning, a hero trying to come to terms with a soul-shattering past, and a terrified, confused little boy in search of his identity drive this poignant, heartwarming novel that steers in the direction of women's fiction. Featuring good writing and exceptionally well-drawn characters, it should appeal to fans of LaVyrle Spencer and Kristin Hannah. Landis is a multiple-award-winning writer (The Orchid Hunter) and lives in Southern California and Hawaii. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.