Standing Firm | Book 1 in Virtuous Women Trilogy

Patience Thayer is the oldest of fifteen and has always wanted to escape the overcrowded house she grew up in. The offer of cooking for Amos Newcomb's lumber mill up in the Blue Mountains is almost too good to be true and she accepts without fear of repercussion. When the town she grew up makes protest to her father, the reverend, she is all but forced to marry the man who hired her, but will theirs remain a marriage of convenience or will love grow between them?

Robert Olson has been looking for a kind woman to keep him company in his mountain home for several years and it seemed that he would never find his "Mrs. Olson". When he meets the beautiful Ruth Thayer everything seems to be looking up for the lovesick lumberjack. Ruth, abandoned when she was only two, reluctantly accepts the lumberjack's advances, but finds herself beginning to be more receptive than she originally thought she would be. Will the arrival of a woman claiming to be Ruth's mother fell their tender beginnings of romance?

Leah Thayer has only one fear in life: fire. When a forest fire threatens her life, James Blackwell swoops in to save her. James, a hero of his own imagination, has only two goals in life: to keep his two younger brothers safe and to find an acceptable wife to raise his future children. Is the love that follows real or only a temporary condition following James' heroic actions?

When Hannah Thayer goes to work at the lumber mill as a cook with her sisters, she finds solace from the heat of the kitchen in the forest. Being the youngest and somewhat plain made her least noticed by all of the lumberjacks except Ezekiel Blackwell. When Hannah goes missing from the cabin she and her sisters have all been living in, Ezekiel must save her from another lumberjack who has taken an interest her. Will love blossom between the two or will Hannah's fear of rejection keep her from responding to Ezekiel's advances?