She lost one husband to a sudden tragedy. Now she must cross the frontier to marry a man she has never met.
Widowed at twenty-four, Molly Bergstrom thought her dream of love, children, and a home in the West had died with her husband on their Ohio dairy farm. But grief has a way of leaving behind unfinished dreams?and Molly cannot forget the life she and Theodore once hoped to build beyond the mountains.
When her mother urges her to answer a notice in the Matrimonial Times, Molly is shocked by the very idea of becoming a mail-order bride. Yet Captain William Strong, a widowed cavalry officer stationed at Fort Lapwai in Idaho Territory, is not the sort of man she expected. His letters are steady, thoughtful, and touched by the same sorrow Molly carries in her own heart.
Against her fears, Molly accepts his proposal and begins the long journey west.
By train and wagon, through wilderness, frontier towns, and dangerous country, Molly travels toward a husband she knows only through ink and paper. Along the way, she finds friendship with two other brides bound for the same fort?and courage she did not know she still possessed.
At Fort Lapwai, Captain Strong is waiting. So is a wedding place more beautiful than Molly ever imagined: a riverbank bright with wildflowers and butterflies, in a land whose very name means "the place of the butterflies."
But marriage is only the beginning.
As Molly learns to live as an officer's wife on a remote army post, she must face the shadow of William's first wife, the rules and dangers of frontier life, and the uncertainty of giving her heart to another man after loss. And when a new opportunity rises in Sawyerville, Oregon, Molly and William must decide whether their second chance at love is strong enough to carry them into an unknown future.
Place of the Butterflies is Book 2 in the Sawyerville Mail Order Brides series, a clean and heartfelt historical romance about grief, courage, frontier marriage, and the beautiful risk of beginning again.
