Love Has a Southern Heartbeat

This is a love story, but not quite the way one would expect it to happen, with a surprise ending. It has gentleness, joy, pathos, and sadness. It puts you squarely into Victorian-era Arizona at a time when the railroad has not yet arrived and travel is by stagecoach. Henry Stratham is a civil engineer, a former Union artilleryman, and a principal investor in a major railroad scandal. Elizabeth (Lizbeth) Truman is the widow of an Arizona logger who has two children. What do they have in common? Not much. Thaddeus Truman, the widow’s father-in-law, decides it’s time for her to remarry and sets into motion a mail-order-husband effort. While Henry perceives that the opportunity allows him to obtain western employment and land, Lizbeth wrestles with the inevitability of her remarriage, if for no reason other than her children. Campbell Stanley is a Michigan schoolteacher who attracts Naomi Givings, a young Georgia governess who has been ordered by the court to deliver her charges to a New Mexico orphanage. Was it only a chance meeting, or was there some overarching plan to draw her to the western city of Flagstaff, Arizona? Two children, Martha and Jacob, each in search of a father, bring to the story the sadness over the loss of a parent and the consideration of a potential replacement who challenges their relationship with each other. The wealthy traveler (Claude Chana) who rescues the orphanage and the U.S. Government auditor (J.R. Wentworth) who serves a warrant for the arrest of Henry Stratham—where do they fit into the story? And finally, there is Old Wellington—the smartest horse you ever saw.