Lessons of the Heart
Helen HardtHistorical romance
Available from The Wild Rose Press
February 2010
| Ruth Blackburn was a spinster school teacher in the Dakota Territory in 1876. She lived with her parents and travelled to and from their farm to her school building daily. She did it because she loved her students. She took their achievements seriously and demanded their best. A little girl whose work had slipped was kept after school for detention. Ruth wasn’t prepared for her irate father to come into the school and demand Mary Alice get home to her chores. Ruth had never encountered such a man’s personality.
Garth MacKenzie and his eleven-year-old daughter Mary Alice barely survived on their farm. Since her mother and little brother had died, Mary Alice had to assume the duties of a mother—cooking and cleaning like an adult. She faced some problems she didn’t know how to handle. Ruth wanted to help. She hadn’t counted on Garth’s reaction to her. He more than grabbed her attention. Ms. Hardt has once again written another well-developed, interesting novel. Her characters were so believable it was as if I lived on the outside of the cabin looking in. The main characters had such dynamic, emotional personalities, it seemed as if they were destined to find each other. However, a happily-ever-after was not simply reached. The style of Hardt’s book grabbed my attention. The sensuality of the book wasn’t too graphic. There were some flashbacks of the war which did get explicit. She wrote intelligently about the situations and made them very real to this reader. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical romance. Hardt is an author whom I expect to see more and more of in the future.
Overall rating:
Reviewer: Brenda Talley |
