It's the year 1851, a year when there are few employment opportunities for single women. Shame marks the life of Katie, abandoned daughter of a prostitute. Spending some years protected from the outer world, she is forced into a world that forever sees her as an extension of her mother's shadow. She can bear it or leave!

Seeking employment far from Applesby, Maine, she sees an ad, "Rancher Seeking Wife..." and decides in a heartbeat she has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

In a perfect fairytale world, she would meet the heartthrob of her life and live happily ever after. Ah, but we all know such tales aren't necessarily the way life works when the rubber meets the road. Katie is thrown into a heart-rending, confusing world where she is wanted but despised. Learning she has been the tool of a family feud, she steels herself to cope with a steely, wounded Reed Benton.

Add to that mix Reed's discovery of his long-lost son, captured years ago by a murderous Commanche raiding party, and one is entrenched in this conflict-ridden, yet emotionally gripping story. Daniel Benton doesn't know how he is connected to his new white captors, but he is biding his time to escape to what he mistakenly believes are his Commanche roots as Fast Pony, son of Many Horses.

Who fits where? Rage and fury, steamy physical attraction and defensive denial, spin through scenes in a world where every character must again learn to risk, and trust new beginnings can change a wounded world. Accompany Reed, Katie and other dynamic residents of Texas, where men yearn for the simple male companionship experienced in the open plains, while still being magnetized by the beauty and fiercely independent strength of women like Katie. Tenderly care, with Katie, for the brutalized women who are a living reminder of Katie's wounded past, as well as the boy whom everyone else sees as a fierce enemy.

Jill Landis does a fine job of presenting believable, passionate characters who are the victims of others' manipulations but who are willing to live with passion and dignity. Violence is given a totally different twist in this portrayal of western settlers battling Indians struggling to proudly hold onto a dying way of life.

Lone Star Ranch is located in dry, searingly hot Texas. Landis makes the reader feel the barren loneliness amidst the sheer, vibrant beauty of newly settled land that is ripe for successful adventurers yet full of enough startling violence to make the lighthearted quake.

The opening quotation from Macbeth aptly alerts the reader to the task at hand, to "Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart..." Heavy words take on a slowly growing sweetness in this wild novel of the heart's longing and the winding road leading away from and toward it.

Enjoy the fierceness and tenderness of this beautiful novel wherein love displays many different masks, but heals and shows the true nature of committed relationships!