Grace is a trail widow. Her husband, a minister, died of cholera on the way to Oregon in the wagon train, but she's still a virgin, as the marriage was arranged for convenience and he was totally devoted to God. Grace was hoping for a fresh start with her two younger sisters after her parents died. She was brought up as a healer and midwifery, and she decided to help the locals, settlers and Indians alike, upon arriving at the Whitman Mission, instead of pushing onto Oregon City, as they had not heard back from their uncle supposedly residing there, despite one of the widowers from the wagon train keep asking for her hand in marriage. She met Alex, one of the fur trappers in the region, and he helped as a translator to help the locals. But an aggressive band of Indians, believing that the local doctor is out to poison them instead of treating them, intended a pogrom. Alex had to keep Grace safe, but can he and his partner Sam save the other two sisters?
While the adventure portions are excellent, the love between the two seems tepid at best. The darkest hour doesn't quite seem to stack up properly. Alex had his own dark past as reason(s) to be roaming the frontier and made friends with Nez Parce, but the story continued on for quite a bit even after he revealed his past to Grace. In fact, the "triangle" barely made sense. The Christian angle was tolerable, if a bit persistent. This is, after all, the frontier. But some of the problems felt... arbitrary. For example, the middle sister had suffered trauma and PTSD. Grace keep trying to console her, and the sister, in a fit of rage, took Grace's bag, containing almost all of their belongings, and threw it into the river. Why the bag just because it's there? It seems this was done almost arbitrarily to force Grace into accepting a loveless marriage later so she can provide for her sisters. It felt wrong. The story then diverged then converged to deal with the sister's PTSD. it felt a bit... clumsy plotting. All in all, 3/5
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