A Tender Hope

February 18, 2019
Cabot concludes her Cimarron Creek Trilogy (after A Borrowed Dream) with a lovely tale that brings the series’ threads together. Looking to start new lives, midwife Thea Michener and her friend Aimee Jarre relocate to Cimarron Creek, Texas. Thea is trying to escape the painful memories of her murdered gunslinging husband and the birth of a stillborn child that sent her into a deep depression. Aimee suggests Cimarron Creek because she believes it’s the home of her birth mother, who she longs to find. But upon arrival, both find much more than they anticipated in the small Texas town. Ranger Jackson Guthrie looks up Thea after realizing she might be linked to the notorious Gang of Four, a gang her dead husband was rumored to run with. With the gang continuing to wreak havoc across Texas, Guthrie cozies up to Thea in order to get inside information. As Thea learns more about her dead husband’s past, she realizes she never truly knew him and relies on her faith to forge a new beginning. With Aimee reconnecting with her mother and Thea finding a natural chemistry with Guthrie, both women find a happy ending. Appearances by past protagonists Warner Gray, Travis and Lydia Whitfield, and Nate Kenton will please fans of the series, though this outing’s main cast is a bit slow to develop. Still, series fans will appreciate this pleasing finale.

March 1, 2019
Texas Ranger Jackson Guthrie is on the trail of the outlaw gang that killed his brother when he finds a baby at the base of a cactus in the middle of nowhere. This gives him the perfect excuse to visit the newly arrived midwife he suspects is a gang member. Thea Michener, hoping to start a new life following the deaths of her husband and baby, has arrived in Cimarron Creek with Aimee, a young French woman, seeking her birth mother. Discovering that the baby's mother, who looked so much like Thea they could have been twins, had been tortured and murdered, Jackson realizes Thea is in great danger. As Thea and Aimee become part of the community, love blossoms between several different couples against the background of lurking danger. The conclusion of Cabot's Cimarron Creek trilogy, which can be enjoyed as a stand-alone, is a delightfully chaste romance with broad appeal for fans of historical fiction as well as romance and even westerns.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)