Last Excerpt Before Release Day

Hello again, and welcome to the last week before What Mends the Heart's Release Day!

I've taken an informal poll on social media as to which scenes I should post and which I should save for when people read the book (now available for preorder, and coming to Kindle Unlimited on October 15th). Based on the near-consensus expressed, I'm holding back some scenes I might otherwise put here, with the result that this may be the last excerpt I post before Release Day. At least it's a nice long one.

This scene features Freida Kennedy, a widow from New York who has been living -- and matchmaking -- in Cowbird Creek for some years. She has now turned her attention to Stephen, tailor and grieving widower, and Rebecca. As a widow, she has some understanding of Stephen's state of mind. She enters the tailor shop as Stephen is working on a dress for Rebecca. The dog Major belongs to Dr. Joshua Gibbs.

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Lost in imagining how the dress would look when finished, Stephen jumped at the sound of the doorbell jangling, followed by the hearty voice of Freida Kennedy. “Good afternoon! Am I disturbing you? So busy you are, I hope Mr. Sherman will be grateful for how well you’re taking care of his customers, but you shouldn’t overdo.“

To Stephen’s surprise, the dog Major walked in with her as if Dr. Gibbs had assigned it to keep an eye on his patient. Stephen hurried to steer her toward a chair, and she plopped down on it, Major sitting alertly beside her. The moment she was seated, she asked eagerly, “Have you had a chance to start the dress for Rebecca yet, or should I say Miss Wheeler, but you know who I mean, I can’t wait to see it!”

Stephen pulled out the fabric he’d been considering and laid it on the cutting table. “What do you think of this selection? You know Miss Wheeler better than I. Would she like it?”

Mrs. Kennedy gave him a look somewhere between innocent and knowing. “ Yes, I know Rebecca, but it’s so good to have a man’s view, you know what a man appreciates on a woman, and why shouldn’t Rebecca be appreciated?”

“I can hardly speak for all men.” Stephen knew he sounded stiff, but the notion of preparing Rebecca for the admiration of other men was disagreeable. “For whatever it may be worth, I believe this fabric would do her justice.”

His visitor seemed to find this answer excessively pleasing, clapping her hands and exclaiming, “Just the right thing to say, we must do dear Rebecca justice, and I’m sure you’ll turn this fabric into a dress that can do it! What details do you have in mind, how different will it be from her other dresses, a little different would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

He sketched out his idea for her, and she accepted almost all of it, suggesting only an adjustment to the sleeve cuffs. “I can’t wait!” she exclaimed, leaving the chair and floating around the room as if her delight had lightened her considerable bulk. Major followed her movements with what Stephen fancied was anxiety as she said, “To see dear Rebecca in something new, something just right for her, she deserves a treat, she works so hard!” She sighed, her large bosom heaving dramatically. Then she leaned forward and peered at him. “You know I used to be Blum, not Kennedy, don’t you?”

Stephen went on alert. For Freida, that had been a short sentence. The woman was up to something.

She didn’t wait for him to reply, but went on, “I was married to my Samuel for years and years, we had our ups and downs but he was a good man, and good to me.” She looked at him with a sober expression he had not seen from her before. “We loved each other, Mr. Millory. It was hard to lose him, hard to find myself in a new life without him in it, hard to believe I would never see all his little quirks or hear his voice. Hard to know he could never touch me again, and I could never touch him.”

He wanted to stop her, to shut her up somehow before he lost control. But he could not quite bring himself to interrupt her. He bit his lip, leaned against the sewing machine, and endured.

“So I moved to Cowbird Creek for a change, because having to live a different life might be easier in a different place, I wouldn’t have to see places Samuel had been or think I was still smelling his smell even after I’d given all his clothes away . . . I wouldn’t even have to listen to our friends try to make me feel better. I moved here, and I kept busy so I wouldn’t have as much time to brood, and I made friends, and when they were single I tried to help them find someone to marry . . . because I’d been happy when I was married and I wanted them to be happy too, it was a little like being happy myself.”

Leaning on the machine meant facing Freida, and he needed to turn away. He went over to the cabinet and braced himself facing it.

“And then who should come to town but Jedidiah Kennedy, that big handsome man with the gold curls and the big voice, with a medicine wagon that drove Joshua Gibbs crazy, until I made him talk to Jedidiah and find out what kind of man he was. And who would ever have thought that old Freida Blum would end up Freida Kennedy, bumping along all over the country in a wagon, seeing one new place after another, and happy with it all. And even now, when Jedidiah and Joshua joined forces and made me stay put instead of traveling around any more, I still get to see him whenever he comes to town, for as long as he can stay, and in between I can think of him and it’s so different from thinking about Samuel, I still love Samuel but it’s easier to think of him now, I wouldn’t have thought that. It’s easier to think about the husband I loved, because I have a husband I love again, and it doesn’t hurt the way it did before, not as much. So you see.”

She didn’t say what he was supposed to see. She just let him draw the conclusion, while she sat there breathing a little hard. Before he found anything to say or trusted his voice to say it, she was talking again, more slowly. “So now you can be angry, I have no business talking to you this way when we haven’t known each other all that long, I come in here to talk about a dress and next thing you know I’m telling you how to live. I’d say I was sorry, but really I’m not sorry except for upsetting you, any more than I was sorry when I tried to match people up and they got annoyed about it. But maybe someone new will come to town, like Jedidiah came to me, and then I can try again, what do you think?”

Stephen turned slowly around and said, as normally as he could, “I would expect nothing less. You want to see your friend happy, and she deserves to be.”

Freida cocked her head. “Like you? Or are you different, you shouldn’t be happy, or you should only be happy once, twice would be too much?” She hoisted herself to her feet. “Well, I’ll be going, you have plenty of work to do, and here I am distracting you. Thank you for letting me help a little with the dress, it’s going to be beautiful, Rebecca will love it!” And without waiting for him to respond, she clomped to the door and left, Major trotting alongside.

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Could you resist Freida's persuasion, if she set her sights on you?

Two Weeks to Go! -- So Here's Another Excerpt from WHAT MENDS THE HEART

I've been away, visiting family and (sigh) getting sick, but I'm back at my keyboard and ready to post another excerpt from What Mends the Heart! Previous posts have provided a character sketch of Stephen Millory, tailor and grieving widower; introduced him properly, with two scenes from his point of view; similarly introduced Rebecca Wheeler, who runs the local boarding house; and shown how both of these characters handled an embarrassing request Rebecca makes of Stephen. Why embarrassing? Well, she's asking him to do some sewing for her unlikely friend Mamie, who runs the local "parlor house."

Now, with only two weeks to go before Book Release Day, here's another scene, where Stephen brings Rebecca to meet his horse Breeze. Stephen has another errand at the stable: he has arranged to show Jacob Flint, the owner of the stable (and Mamie's husband), some horse blankets Jacob may wish to purchase. (If you're curious about how the local madam and the owner of the livery stable ended up together, you can read all about it in What Shows the Heart.)

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“Here he is. Breeze, say hello to my landlady, who takes care of her boarders even better than Flint here takes care of you.”

Mr. Millory talked more easily, and with more warmth, to the horse than he did to any of the people she’d seen him with. He stroked the horse’s nose and neck; the horse nickered and ran its nose along his shoulder. Was this animal the closest connection the man had left? It was, in a way, like being introduced to a man’s family. She felt inclined to curtsy, but restrained herself, approaching instead to feed the horse an apple she’d brought along.

“This must be the blanket that impressed Mr. Flint so much.” She fingered the thick, rich material and imagined being clothed in it. “I can see why. It must keep him wonderfully cozy. I hope Breeze realizes how lucky he is.”

“Here are the others I brought.” He picked up the small pile of horse blankets and laid them one by one on the hay bales. He picked up one with deep greens and blues woven in a sort of plaid. “This one’s based on a Scottish tartan, and would show up nicely on a dark brown horse or a black one.” Next came one in white and yellow. “This would look good on a bay. And this one,” he said, pointing to the third, combining shades of red from light rose to maroon, “could work for any number of horses.”

Rebecca came close to see the patterns and textures better. Mr. Millory was still standing there. They were standing there together, close together, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him in the chilly stable. How could a man who kept to himself, a man so lonely, give off so much warmth?

He picked up the white and yellow blanket and held it out to her. Quietly, as if talking to himself, he said, “This one goes with your hair.” And as she stood there in shock, he went on, “Would you like to hold it?”

She reached for it, delighting in the feel of the material, resisting a mad impulse to drape it over her head like a scarf or a hat. Mr. Millory’s mouth twitched as if trying to smile, and he said, “I was right.”

They were facing each other now. He put out his hand as if to take the blanket back, but no, he was only touching it, touching it as she was. Their hands were only a few inches apart, and she could see his wrists. They looked strong, muscular even though lean.

Somehow the two of them were even closer to each other. Had he moved, or had she? She could feel his breath on her cheek, like a soft touch.

“Rebecca,” he said in a soft murmur. She had never thought to hear him say her name. She wanted to hear him say it again.

But what she heard instead were approaching footsteps and the light banter of conversation. Mamie and Jacob Flint had come back.

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What excerpt will I post next? Frankly, I haven't decided. If you have any requests, drop them in the comments! But in just two weeks, you'll be able to read it all. Here are the links to preorder the book on Amazon and on Bookshop.org.

Next Excerpt: Rebecca Has An Embarrassing Request

My American historical romance What Mends the Heart comes out in less than a month, so here's another excerpt! This encounter, seen first from Rebecca's point of view and then from Stephen's, grows out of Rebecca's surprising friendship with Madam Mamie, the proprietor of the town's parlor house (an upscale brothel). Mamie has asked Rebecca, as a favor, to pass on a request for her.

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Approaching Mr. Millory about dresses for Mamie’s girls would be tricky, as she’d known from the start. Even visiting the tailor shop again might cause comment, but she could take him some of the molasses cookies she’d made as an excuse. If questioned, she could say that she wouldn’t put it past him to get so caught up in his work that he would miss supper.

She’d put the cookies in an embossed tin, and held it out as she entered. The excuse seemed feeble to her now, and Mr. Millory’s raised eyebrow made her feel utterly transparent. Instead of saying what she’d rehearsed, she set the tin on the table and said, “I come with a request you may find . . . surprising.” She gulped. “Even inappropriate.” Could she possibly feel any more like a child confessing naughtiness?

He had been bending over to examine the tin, but her words brought him bolt upright. “Has some problem arisen at the boarding house? Something with which I could assist?”

His generous response only made her feel worse. But it also gave her an opening. “No, nothing like that. But there is someone else with a dilemma. I came to speak for her, as you and she . . . have not been introduced, and any such introduction might . . . might not be something you would choose.”

Mr. Millory stood patiently, if in obvious puzzlement, waiting for her to start making sense. She had better simply get to the point. “I don’t know whether it has come to your attention that we have a parlor house in town. Its proprietor is a Madam Mamie. It may surprise you to learn that Mamie and I are acquainted. Are, in fact, on friendly terms.” And he could guess what he liked about how such a friendship had come to pass.

* * * * *

Stephen stood in a tailor shop far better equipped than his own, in a town that was not his own, trying not to stare at the kindly, respectable woman who had just declared herself friends with a brothel keeper, and considered the possibility that he was lying in bed delirious with fever. That was far more likely than any other explanation.

But if he were suffering from so severe an illness, where was Mary? She could not be the woman whose bizarre statement he had just hallucinated. Even in a fever dream, he could not be transforming Mary’s ethereal grace, the deceptively slight build that contained such force of will, into this lushly curved figure with hair the color of honey.

And Mary was dead.

Even in delirium, he could not forget for long. Mary was gone, eternally beyond his reach, his touch. And his hunger for her, never to be satisfied again, must have led him to conjure not just this vision of fleshly allure, this embodiment of carnal desire, but her talk of the most extreme indulgence. He could only wonder why he had not imagined her to be the madam herself.

“Mr. Millory? Are you well?”

The pleasing feminine voice sounded uncertain. If a nurse was speaking, surely she would know he was ill.

A hand, a woman’s hand, touched his shoulder. “You’re swaying. Let me help you sit down.”

He had been standing, still was standing. So he was not lying feverish in bed. And everything around him was real. Including the woman about whom he had been thinking such lecherous thoughts, and who was now touching him, pulling him to lean against her, guiding him to the padded bench.

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Something's brewing!

You can preorder the book on Amazon, Bookshop (which can benefit your favorite indie bookstore), and other bookseller sites. I'd be delighted if you do! But I'll be publishing more excerpts to try to pique your interest.

Introduction to Rebecca, Heroine of My Upcoming Historical Romance

With the release of What Mends the Heart coming in six weeks, and now that we've met male protagonist Stephen Millory, it's time to meet its female protagonist. Here are the opening paragraphs of the book, which introduce the reader to Rebecca Wheeler, proprietor of Cowbird Creek's boarding house.

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Rebecca Wheeler looked out the window at a chilly day and gave thanks for her warm kitchen. On fresh spring days when the breeze blew the scent of flowers and new grass her way, or when summer sun invited her to raise her face to it and bask in the warmth, the many tasks to be done indoors could make her restless. On days like today, the kitchen and the whole boarding house felt like a warm refuge, a hug in the form of a building.

And her boarders seemed to feel the same way.

The load of wood in the big cast-iron stove’s firebox was still putting out plenty of heat, and would for hours yet. She opened the oven and took a sniff of the meat loaf they would have for dinner. Mmm, just right, rich and meaty with a hint of browning. She hadn’t had to use too much filler — almost all her rooms were full, and the boarders had been diligent about paying on time. The butcher had smiled at her this week when she’d given him her order for pork and beef. She closed the oven and checked on the carrots simmering on the cook top, poking them with the tip of the knife she’d used to chop them into slices. They needed a little more time, what with several of her boarders having bad teeth or few of them or both. They’d be nice and sweet, with almost all of them newly harvested from the winter crop. She unwrapped the dish cloth around the biscuits just enough to check whether they were still warm. They could have been warmer — it was tricky to get everything ready to serve at the same time — but they’d do, and the fresh butter would help.

It was one of the days when she enjoyed cooking. There were times when all the choosing and chopping and dishing out and cleaning up would weary her, and she’d promise herself to find another cook to take on trial. But the first one she’d tried always undercooked the vegetables, and her fried chicken was greasy. And the second did a better job, but turned out to be a gossip, and a nasty one at that. She’d almost lost two boarders over hurt feelings before she gave up on breaking the woman of that habit.

Besides, she liked keeping people fed. Taking care of people. The minister liked to tease her about being a hen with her chicks. And she did feel sorry when any of them left.

Well, she wasn’t a hen, so enough of this brooding! She moved the carrots off the boiler hole and got busy dishing up the food.

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And here, two chapters later, is the moment Rebecca meets Stephen.

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She offered him her hand to shake, reaching up on account of his height. His clasp was strong and warm, his palm firm. He struck her as looking rather like the late President Lincoln, though not as homely — not homely at all, exactly — and with red-brown hair instead of dark. Any woman who kept a boarding house had to acquire the skill of summing people up quickly. On first impression, he seemed sad and defeated, underfed and underslept, with the haunted look some widowers had. That usually meant either a good marriage, or one that had been less happy and had left the man with regrets.

“Good afternoon, Miss Wheeler,” he replied in a low, pleasant voice, stooping enough to look her in the eye. “Thank you for your kind welcome. I do indeed come in search of room and board." He had large brown eyes, with a hint of gold around the iris. She rather thought it would be hard to look away from those eyes, if one spent too long looking into them.

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And what does Stephen think of Rebecca on first meeting her? She reminds him of a bright-eyed bird, a meadowlark.

You can preorder What Mends the Heart on Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere.

Next time: a sewing lesson!

The Promised Scene from What Mends the Heart, now available for preorder

 Actually, to make up for having waited so long to post again, I'm including two scenes, both from the POV of protagonist Stephen Millory. But first, you may wish to reread Stephen's character sketch.

And now, here's the first excerpt. Stephen arrives at the tailor shop he'll be using until Cowbird Creek's tailor comes back to town.

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In the middle of the room, the light from the window falling golden upon it, was a sewing machine. A sewing machine, shiny black, metal parts glistening, with an open-work metal plate almost spanning its width suspended between the metal legs, and a maroon padded bench behind it. Stephen had never seen one, only the pictures in the catalogue. He and Mary had talked about what it would take to acquire one, but it had always been out of reach. How excited she’d be when he went home and told her! —

The bolt of memory struck and staggered him, as it always did. He could not seem to keep in mind that he now lived in a world without her. No, his mind insisted on inhabiting the world where he belonged, the world when he could go home and see her, hear her, hold her, tell her all the unimportant things no one else would want to hear.

He fought to keep breathing. One of these days, the stroke would be too powerful, and he would stop. But until then, he had to keep living in this poorer, drab world in which he was left behind.

At least, for now, it contained a sewing machine.

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The next excerpt comes a little later, after Stephen has moved into Rebecca Wheeler's boarding house. He's the only male boarder, and most of the other boarders are middle-aged or older. Supper is over, and Stephen has gone to his room to settle in.

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It took him a while to notice that something distracting was happening. Was someone knocking on the door to his room? No, not knocking, but there were sounds coming from the hallway, footsteps that came closer and paused and left again, followed by others doing the same; and voices, almost as quiet as whispers, then louder, then followed by urgent hushing sounds and the almost-whispers again.

He could easily guess what was going on. At supper, the boarders had peppered him with all the questions he had feared, but Miss Wheeler had managed to politely interrupt almost every time, deftly changing the subject to less painful ones, asking him about the tailor shop and what he hoped to do during his visit. A couple of the bolder ladies had offered to show him this or that highlight of Cowbird Creek, offers he had (he hoped) politely deflected. All those unanswered questions and invitations must now have followed him upstairs, the ladies finding or making excuses to traipse up and down the hall, collecting in little clusters to gossip and exclaim and compare notes.

What would they do if he suddenly flung open the door and shouted “Boo!”? Picturing their startled expressions and flustered gestures made him actually laugh. The noises outside the door fell silent, and then started up again, more fast-paced than ever.

Another notion took him, less outrageous than the first, and practical to boot. He stripped down to undershirt and drawers, put on his dressing gown, picked up the towel Miss Wheeler had left in the room, and opened the door. “Oh, excuse me!” he exclaimed, pretending to be surprised at the ladies who gasped and gaped and flattened themselves against the hallway. “I was heading down to the washroom. I hope I haven’t interrupted anything.” They scattered and tittered and clucked as he made his way down the hall. When he reached the washroom, he closed the door and leaned against it, as he had done at the tailor shop, but this time he smiled as he got ready for bed.

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If you want to make sure you don't have to wait longer than necessary for the actual book, you can (as of today) preorder it! Here are the links for Amazon (currently ebook only, but the paperback should pop up soon); for Bookshop.org (paperback only); and for Barnes & Noble (ditto). Any of them should send you the book on October 15, 2026. 

Next time, I'll give you a scene or two from Rebecca's point of view.

Checking Back In, Finally -- With a Character Sketch

I haven't been living under a rock in a cave on a mountain. I swear! I've been writing and editing, working with my cover designer, fumbling around at promotion, failing to solve a Word formatting problem, and writing my monthly newsletter and my weekly Substack. But I reread (well, re-skimmed) an article about keeping my "brand" alive and was reminded that I should do more than that -- including, for example, posting character sketches and quotations from time to time.

Plugging in a quotation is easy enough. All I have to do is overcome my chronic indecisiveness and pick one. But I have a historical romance coming out this fall -- What Mends the Heart (Cowbird Creek 5) -- and as I start telling people about it, it might be useful to have done a sketch of the male protagonist. So here we go. Meet Stephen Millory of Green Pond, Nebraska, who will shortly be spending some time in Cowbird Creek.

Stephen is a tailor, with more training and skill than his little shop allows him to exercise. He is both fundamentally decent and fundamentally serious. Life has given him one great gift: the love of his wife Mary. He has not forgotten to be glad and grateful for that gift, despite the sorrow of their inability to have children, and to cherish Mary all the days of their life.

And then that gift is taken away. Mary dies of consumption (tuberculosis), and what remains is emptiness. His work is some small consolation, but no more.

Then Cowbird Creek's tailor Mr. Sherman asks Stephen to come to town and take over his well-appointed shop for a while, as Sherman must attend to urgent family business back east. And Stephen ends up staying at Rebecca Wheeler's boarding house. . . .

I hope this is enough to make you wish Stephen well, and possibly to intrigue you. Next time: a passage from Stephen's point of view. Until then!

Back to Cowbird Creek, With a Corrected Excerpt

As I'll say in today's Substack post, now that I've survived Release Day for my paranormal horror-adjacent novel, I'm returning to my historical romance series Cowbird Creek.  Looking up some character details in earlier books, I came upon an excerpt involving chicken soup (not in any way related to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series) and decided to read it just for the fun of it. Except when I did so, I noticed some format weirdness. Why were a few words in bold and a sentence in the wrong size font? I anxiously turned to the actual book and was relieved, if mystified, that it didn't include the same errors.

I made haste to fix the errors and then went looking online for wherever I'd posted the excerpt originally. I soon learned that the site where that excerpt appeared no longer exists in its original form, and the replacement I found doesn't seem to have the excerpt anywhere. I really do like the scene, so I'm posting it -- in corrected form, of course -- here.

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Joshua closed the door behind the farmer’s boy, holding the empty coffee cup, and leaned against the door. He’d made enough coffee for both of them, but hadn’t ended up drinking any. Bone-tired as he was, he didn’t have the strength to deal with coffee jitters. 

He stumbled over to the dresser where he kept his nightshirt, pulled off his soaked frock coat and shirt and trousers, let them fall in a sodden heap on the floor, and pulled the nightshirt on. He’d take the wet, wrinkled clothes to Li Chang in the morning. Times like this, he was sorely grateful to his sisters back in Pennsylvania, who’d pooled their resources to send him a second set of clothes suitable for a doctor. He used almost his last strength to dig the bone saw in its case out of his bag and shove it out of sight on the shelf where he kept it. 

Scratching at the door heralded Major’s return from wherever he’d been wandering. Joshua grabbed a towel from the hook near the door and let the dog in. Rubbing the dog down warmed him up a little, but the sooner he was in bed with every quilt and comforter he owned on top of him, the happier he’d be. He moved to blow out the oil lamp. 

Were those steps on the stairs up to his rooms? 

And then, the door again, but this time a knock, or maybe a kick, a dull thud, once and then repeated. 

If he’d had the energy, he would have cussed a blue streak. Not now. Oh, God, not now. A knock this late meant an emergency. He would have to somehow find the wit and the strength to save someone, and he had none of either left. 

“Doctor Gibbs!” (“Doh-ktor Kibbs.”) A woman. He knew he should, but didn't, recognize the voice. 

She didn’t sound sick. Could it be one of her neighbors, or worse, a neighbor’s child? But if it were childhood disease, he might be able to treat the fever, at least, or do something for vomiting. He could handle that. He opened the door. 

There stood Mrs. Blum, her fur coat making her look like a friendly mama bear, holding a covered pot in her hands. 

“I saw you come in, looking so wet and tired. I brought enough for the boy who was with you, but I see he’s gone. May I come in? You won’t leave an old woman standing outside on a staircase, will you?” 

He stumbled back dumbly and let her pass, shoving the door shut with a weak thrust as she barreled toward the kitchen table. She put the pot down, dropped her coat in a corner, and pulled out his chair. “Sit, sit!” 

He collapsed into the chair while she rummaged around, seemingly quite at home, finding a bowl and a spoon. She pulled a ladle from some pocket, then whisked the cover off the pot. Fragrant steam rose up out of it. He leaned forward, sniffing, and smiled weakly to see Major coming toward them to do the same. “What is it?” 

“What is it? Chicken soup is what it is! What else, for warming you up and keeping you from catching your death?” She paused, almost coy. “Oh, here I am telling you your business. But if you don’t already know about chicken soup, it’s time you did, no?” (Though the “no” sounded more like “nu.”) 

She dipped the ladle in once, twice, three times, and then stopped and frowned at the bowl in frustration, looking ready to scold it for not having more room before pushing it toward him. “You start with that. I’ll put the rest on the stove to keep warm.” 

The soup had hunks of carrot and big chunks of chicken, and some sort of strange, light dumplings. Joshua barely made himself use the spoon instead of picking up the bowl and pouring it into his mouth. As it was, his hand shook so that he spilled some of the soup on the table. Without missing a beat, Mrs. Blum tossed a dish towel his way before dragging a stool over to the table and perching on it, overflowing it on every side. When he managed to look up from his miraculous meal, he saw her beaming at him, clearly delighted at the way he was slurping the soup down with no sign of table manners. The moment the spoon clinked the bottom of the bowl, she grabbed the bowl and filled it back up to the brim. “Eat, eat!” 

He was feeling full to the brim himself, but he thought it likely that if he dared to stop before the bowl was empty again, she would seize the spoon and feed him like an infant. He made his way manfully through.

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If you don't already know Dr. Joshua Gibbs and widow Freida Blum, you can find them in What Heals the Heart (Cowbird Creek Book 1).

Wish me luck with Book 5!