Heart of Gold - Robin Lee Hatcher

I've read a few of this author's books in the past and have enjoyed them for the most part. This one looked to be right up my alley.  Stagecoach driver, Idaho.  It's up close to my area and sounded interesting.

Shannon is a young woman living in Virginia at the time of the Civil War.  The war has given her the opportunity to nurse injured soldiers and her fiance has been killed.  She's very bitter toward the North, unlike her father, the minister, who believes that all are children of God and refuses to take sides.  Now he has taken a job in a mining town in Idaho and is taking Shannon away from everything she knows and loves.

Matthew is a stagecoach driver for Wells Fargo.  When his sister reaches out to him to help her, he agrees to set aside the stagecoach driving that he loves so much and help nurse her back to health.  It has been a long time since he has seen her, but with her husband gone and a young boy to take care of, it's his duty to step up and help her.

The first meeting between Shannon and Matthew doesn't bode well for a future for the two.  But with the arrival of Alice, Matthew's sister, Shannon offers to use her nursing skills to help the woman back to health.  The problem is that Alice is dying and nothing will change that.  Alice's husband fought for the Union and Shannon vows that they can never become friends.

As Shannon spends more time in Idaho away from the war, it seems a little more distant. Alice becomes very dear to her, but the dying woman has a plan in mind to make sure that her brother and her son are taken care of.  She also starts to think that Matthew might not be as bad as she first thought.

It took me a long time to get through this book, not because it was a bad read, but because of the winter break.  I also had a little trouble getting through it at times with the formatting.  There were paragraph breaks in there all over the place that just didn't belong.  It was a good read and I think that it was a good purchase. It was depressing at times, with Alice dying throughout most of the book, but that's life. The villain was a little predictable and I had him figured out and what he was up to pretty early on.  All in all, it was a nice read and I give it my Good Book! review.