On the historic plains, four women find someone to marry. Will these brides blossom like sunflowers in the prairie heat - or wither under the pressures of marriage? Is it really love when... Sara's trying to escape an abusive stepfather, and her groom marries to please his father? Jane wonders if the marriage proposal she's received is Luke's reaction to the love he just lost - Jane's own sister? Mara collects suitors like some women collect teacups - though not the one man she really wants? Emily says "I do" with the dream of having children but finds her husband has no such desire? Will these marriages ripen to a full harvest of love or will they produce only chaff scattered on the wind? Can these women trust God to orchestrate their lives and loves?

The one suitor Mara Lawton cannot add to her collection is the one she wants most--Clay Stedman. Clay has just arrived in Cedar Springs to work the Stedman ranch. His widowed aunt is leaving to visit family back East, and Clay must find someone to care for his little sister and perform the household chores--like cooking for fourteen cowboys, doing the laundry, and feeding the hogs. Mara offers Clay her services, despite having never cooked a meal, washed a garment, or gone near a hog in her life. Clay is taken with Mara's looks, but a recent heartbreak makes him wary--that and the fact she doesn't share his faith in God. For Mara, whose self-worth is based on her family's wealth and royal lineage, obstacles and reverses create a terrible inner turmoil. Will she cling to her own ways or allow God to move in her life? Fall in love with this inspiring love story and our entire collection of Christian romance novels from Heartsong Presents!

VOTED FAVORITE HISTORICAL BOOK IN 2003 Emily Wagner will be a mail-order bride. This arrangement will answer all of her problems - best buried. But when she arrives in Cedar Bend, Kansas, she finds her world has been turned upside-down. Cade Manning needs a mother for his son Adam. He has no intention of replacing the memory of his beloved wife Ingrid, but he knows he can't make ends meet without help. Marrying Emily just makes sense. Never mind that they'll only be husband and wife in name only. Surely, she won't be disappointed. Can Emily trust God to work things out for the good? Will Cade be able to forgive her for her lies and love her as she has come to love him?

College student Ivy Towers has definite plans for her future. But when her great-aunt Bitty is found dead inside her rare bookstore, Ivy must travel back to a place and a past she thought she'd left behind.

Most in the United States likely associate the concept of the child bride with the mores and practices of the distant past. But Nicholas L. Syrett challenges this assumption in his sweeping and sometimes shocking history of youthful marriage in America. Focusing on young women and girls--the most common underage spouses--Syrett tracks the marital history of American minors from the colonial period to the present, chronicling the debates and moral panics related to these unions. Although the frequency of child marriages has declined since the early twentieth century, Syrett reveals that the practice was historically far more widespread in the United States than is commonly thought. It also continues to this day: current estimates indicate that 9 percent of living American women were married before turning eighteen. By examining the legal and social forces that have worked to curtail early marriage in America--including the efforts of women's rights activists, advocates for children's rights, and social workers--Syrett sheds new light on the American public's perceptions of young people marrying and the ways that individuals and communities challenged the complex legalities and cultural norms brought to the fore when underage citizens, by choice or coercion, became husband and wife.

Seven women seek husbands to help them rebuild a Kansas town. Meet seven of Turtle Springs, Kansas’, finest women who are determined to revive their small town after the War Between the States took most of its men. . .and didn’t return them. The ladies decide to advertise for husbands and devise a plan for weeding out the riff raff. But how can they make the best practical choices when their hearts cry out to be loved? Abigail’s Proposal by Cynthia Hickey When her father never returned from the war, Abigail Melton stepped into his role as town mayor. The town needs men, and she needs a husband—and she has a big idea how to find both—but her first duty is to hire a sheriff. And drifter Josiah Ingram will do just fine. The Kidnapped Groom by Susan Page Davis Riding through the Flint Hills on his way to Dodge City, cowboy Sam Cayford finds himself the kidnapping victim of two children. When he meets their lovely mother, Maggie Piner—whom the kids insist he should marry—Sam starts to question God’s plans versus his own. A Clean Slate by Susanne Dietze Schoolmarm Roberta “Birdy” Green won’t marry any of the prospective grooms flocking to town. After losing her fiancé in the war, the only love her broken heart can bear is for her students. But then she takes on a new pupil—Drew Cooper, one of the gentlemen drawn to Kansas by the advertisement for grooms. Sunshine of My Heart by Darlene Franklin Debbie Barker longs to bring beauty to her new home on the prairie, where her family moved after the war, and seeks a husband to help her father run the ranch. Zack Gage returned home from the war to a life in ruins—family dead and business bankrupted. He answers the mail-order husband ad to seek a fresh start. But neither Debbie nor Zeke know what they are doing when it comes to ranching. . .or love. Come What May by Patty Smith Hall Chardy Stevens is at the end of her rope. Between running her late father’s store and tending to her four younger brothers, she barely has time to breathe, much less look for a husband to help her. The boys scare off most of her prospects and throw Chardy together with her childhood friend Luke, a disabled veteran who seeks her happiness above his own. Dime Novel Suitor by Carrie Fancett Pagels Widow Caroline Kane is the proprietor of a restaurant and inn—and responsible for her five teenaged siblings. But she has no plans of finding a mail-order groom. Britisher Barden Granville IV is on a “cowboy holiday” when he finds himself flat broke in Kansas. When he answers an old “help wanted” ad, Caroline misconstrues Barden is there as a potential husband. Will the beautiful and fiesty widow cause the new vicar to make Kansas his home? Louder than Words by Gina Welborn After years of writing abolitionist pamphlets and chronicling soldier life during the war, J.R. Lockhart is bored and jumps at the opportunity to investigate an advertisement for husbands for an article in Godey’s Lady’s Book. Jane Ransome would like to help the charming-but-oblivious-to-life-out-West man chronicle the courtships developing in town, but she has her own husband to find—one who will fit perfectly in her picket-fenced Kansas home.

After learning that Thomas Manning, whom she had planned to marry, had died two days ago, Emily Wagner agrees to marry Thomas' brother, Cade Manning, a widower with a five-year-old son.