Prologue

Sacramento, California

1862

For a month now, the sound of rain had become Jolene’s lullaby and her morning bell. Night after night, it drummed against the roof, a ceaseless percussion that followed her into uneasy dreams. At dawn, it greeted her again, the first thing she knew. The rhythm of her world was water. She could scarcely remember what life had been like before it.

She lay on her back in the dark, bedsheets clammy against her chin, even her skin damp with the constant seep of moisture. The air itself was wet, thick, and heavy in her lungs. Shivering, she rolled to her side, grimacing as her cheek met the cold, sour-smelling pillow.

Beneath the covers, her fingers groped for comfort, closing around soft fabric. She drew the bundle into her arms—the toy she had rediscovered only days ago. At thirteen, she was far too old to clutch a doll to sleep, but in these strange times, nothing was normal. Perhaps that gave her permission.

Her fingertips traced the familiar stitches: four chubby limbs, a stubby tail, floppy ears, tiny eyes, and nose picked out with black thread. A puppy, sewn by her mother’s hands. Jolene remembered sitting on the floor by the rocker, watching with rapt attention as needle and thread gave shape to the creature. For an entire year, she had loved it fiercely, carrying it everywhere. Then, as children do, she forgot. Now it had returned to her, nameless but beloved again.

“What should I call you?” she whispered, her voice thick with sleep.

A puppy with legs like these would bumble about the world. Bumble. Yes—Bumble was a good name.

Her eyelids drooped, and for a moment she forgot the ache in her limbs, the soreness that never left her anymore after endless days of laboring beside Pa, Ma, and her older siblings, Sebastian and Myrtle, to hold their ranch against the floods. Every day, the rain washed away more of their world—fences torn from the earth, cattle drowned, crops lost. No matter how many times they rebuilt, the waters undid their work. Still, they tried, because what else could they do?

But the sound that filled Jolene’s ears now was not the rain. Something else had risen above it—a roar like a thousand voices rushing straight toward her.

She sat up, heart thudding. The shadows in her little room seemed to shift. Then the door burst open.

“Jolene, get out of here now!”

She shrieked as strong hands seized her shoulders and lifted her bodily from the bed. She blinked up at her father’s face, contorted with terror. Never in her life had she seen Pa afraid—until now.

“Pa?”

“Get Phillip and get outside!” His voice strained above the pounding tumult. “We got to leave before the water comes!”

Confusion struck her motionless. She was only in her nightgown—shouldn’t she dress? Pack something? But Ma’s desperate shouting and Phillip’s frightened cries cut through her hesitation. Her little brother. He was only five. He would be looking to her. She must be brave for him.

She started toward the door, too slow for Pa’s liking. He gave her a shove that sent her stumbling into the hallway wall.

The house shuddered. A deafening crack split the night, like lightning tearing wood instead of sky. The roof groaned. Plaster and splinters rained down, striking her shoulders and head. Jolene screamed and bolted, but water was already pouring in, swirling around her feet, tugging and tripping her as she staggered toward the sitting room.

The place she knew had transformed into a nightmare lagoon. Chairs and tables bobbed and spun in a whirlpool of mud-streaked water rushing through broken windows and widening gaps in the walls.

“Jolene!”

She turned. Ma stood on the porch, drenched black by the storm, Phillip clutched tight in her arms.

Jolene edged along the wall, fighting the pull of the current. Her uncle had drowned at sea years ago, swallowed by a whirlpool; now the same terror clawed her throat. But somehow she reached the porch. Phillip hurled himself at her, and she wrapped him close, his little body trembling as fiercely as her own.

Moonlight slivered through torn clouds, painting the chaos in ribbons of silver. The earth itself seemed to dissolve. Roads vanished under torrents, sheds and barns lifted and carried away like toys. Animals flailed past, swept downstream. She saw a canoe capsize with three souls inside, and not one surfaced again.

“Where’s your father?” Ma cried.

“Still inside!”

“Take Phillip and get to the highest hill!” Ma kissed Jolene’s forehead, their gazes locking for a breath, and then Ma turned back into the storm-dark house.

“No—” Jolene tried to reach after her, but icy water sucked at her legs. She stumbled from the porch, knees plunging into mud as thin and treacherous as quicksand. Her mouth filled with grit and water. Phillip’s screams split the night.

Then Sebastian was there, strong arms yanking her upright. He swung Phillip onto his back. “Go!” he barked, pushing Jolene ahead toward the hills.

They half-ran, half-swam, the water rising to their waists, their feet finding ground only in fleeting moments. Terror clawed at Jolene; the flood was alive, full of invisible teeth, dragging her down.

“Help us!” a voice cried from the dark.

Sebastian thrust Jolene forward. “Keep running!” Then he veered away, Phillip clinging to him, the boy’s hand stretched toward her, fingers splayed in silent pleading.

A wall of debris surged between them, cutting them off. Jolene staggered alone, the world reduced to water and ruin.

Something massive loomed out of the dark, rushing straight at her. She kicked, but too slowly. The tangled wreckage of wood and furniture struck hard. Pain burst white. Her skull rang like a bell.

The current seized her. Consciousness slipped. The last image burned into her mind was Phillip’s small, outstretched hand—pale, wet, reaching for her.

Then nothing.

Chapter One

Pine Bluff, Wyoming Territory

1871

The calf lowered his head and snorted, brandishing the nub of his horns as if he were a bull already.

Walker Carson leaned on his pitchfork and let out a low chuckle. “I ain’t afeared of you.” His voice, roughened by years in wind and sun, carried no real amusement. The calf pawed the straw, all bluster and no substance. Walker shoved a hand against its shoulder. “Go on now, get out of here before I turn you into steaks and chuck roast.”

The calf tossed its head but finally skittered off, hooves clattering against the boards. Walker shook his own head, dark hair falling from under the brim of his sweat-stained hat. He set his jaw and drove the fork deep into the clumps of soiled bedding. Muscles bunched in his arms as he heaved another load into the cart.

Most of the herd was already outside grazing. Leave it to a bull calf to linger, testing boundaries. Soon, the animal would have to be penned off before he grew too bold and dangerous. For now, he was only a nuisance—easy enough to handle, but Walker knew how quick calves became bulls with a mind to challenge anything that moved.

The black animal with its white-starred forehead hovered near the barn doors like a shadow. Walker muttered, “Don’t know why you want to stay cooped up in here. Stinks to high heaven. Outside’s got a breeze, grass thick as a quilt, sky wide enough to swallow a man whole.”

By the time he hauled the last forkful into the cart, sweat dampened his shirt. He rolled his shoulders, carried the cart outside, and dumped the foul straw on the compost heap. Spring air kissed the sweat on his skin, drying it to a salty itch. A breeze tugged at the long strands of hair brushing his collar, and for a moment, he let himself breathe. Just breathe.

Life still had its small mercies—air that smelled of pine and earth instead of blood and smoke, a sky painted with honest light instead of the flash of cannon fire. But remembering the good things always cut sharp, because it reminded him of what he’d lost.

Turning back toward the house, Walker spotted a figure waving from the porch. Clive. His right hand, his only hand, truth be told. Friend, brother not by blood but by bond. They’d clawed their way up together—from Chicago’s alleys to this ragged spread on the Wyoming plains.

Walker abandoned the cart and strode up the steps. “We got a problem?”

“No,” Clive said, running a hand through hair that had never seen a comb stay long. “It’s noontime. Thought you might appreciate some lunch.”

Walker checked his body the way he checked a horse—looking for a limp he’d stopped feeling. Nothing stirred. “I’ll pass. Work’s waitin’.”

“Now, hold on a moment.” Clive’s fingers closed on Walker’s sleeve. Smaller man, but he had a blacksmith’s grip. It surprised folks. It had surprised Walker, once. “Humor me. I got a surprise.”

Walker weighed the insistence in Clive’s eyes, grunted, and relented. Better to humor him than waste minutes refusing. Minutes were the one thing the ranch never had enough of.

Inside, the house showed every hard season they’d put it through—scuffed floors, nicked molding, a fatigue to the walls themselves. But the kitchen stopped him cold. The rest had seen better days; this room had seen battle and lost. Flour drifted in dunes across the counter and powdered the boards underfoot so thick his bootprints stood out like tracks after a light snow. Bowls sat in the mess, caked with some gluey paste that clung to the rims as if it meant to hold fast forever.

“What in the world have you done?” he asked, tasting starch on his tongue.

Clive shouldered through the devastation and went to the stove. He opened the oven; steam and a curl of smoke rolled out. “Look here!” He hauled a tray free and thrust it toward Walker with the triumphant air of a man who’d shot game in one clean shot.

Lumps of dough glistened in a lake of butter, somehow raw in the middle and scorched at the edges. Walker frowned and imagined the bite—crisp shell, then a surrender into wet starch.

“What in tarnation are those?”

“What do you mean, ‘what are they’?” Clive sounded wounded. “They’re biscuits. Spent the whole mornin’ on ’em.”

He set the tray down and fetched honey and berry jam. Walker lifted one careful as if it was a hot coal. “They live up to the name of hot rocks,” he said.

“You don’t know good cookin’ when you see it,” Clive retorted, nudging past to plate one. When the biscuit met tin it landed with the thunk of granite. He tried splitting it; it crumbled into talus. “Well… that ain’t ideal,” he allowed. “But they’ll eat. Crumble ’em over beans and bacon.”

“Don’t know if the best bacon in the Territory could make these worth chewin’.” Walker dropped his and wiped grease on his trousers.

Clive’s easy smile puckered into irritation. “Spent the last hour tryin’ to give us somethin’ different. Sorry it ain’t cuttin’ it for you.”

Guilt thumped Walker’s gut. He deserved that. “I know you’re doin’ your best,” he said roughly. “Truth is, between the two of us, our best don’t add up to much anymore.”

Clive lifted his head. “You’re right. Two men ain’t enough for a whole ranch.”

There should’ve been more than two. Once, not so long ago, there had been. Walker locked the memory down with a familiar click. Thinking on the why of it soured a man for days.

Clive wiped flour off his hands, left white smears across his trousers, and leaned against the counter. “Maybe it’s time for somethin’ to change.”

Walker braced his hands on the table. “Change don’t come cheap. I ain’t got money for hired men.”

“We don’t need a man.” Clive’s eyes caught his. “We need a woman.”

Walker froze, then gave a harsh laugh. “You lost your senses? What makes you think a woman’d fix what’s broken here?”

Clive gestured around them. “Cooking, washing, chickens, garden—half this place is dying because I’m stuck indoors while you break your back outside. You hate house chores, I hate seeing you work yourself into the ground. A woman keeps the house, frees me to help you. It’s survival, Walker.”

Walker’s jaw clenched. He wanted to sneer, to shove the notion aside. But Clive wasn’t jesting. The man had been with him since they were boys running hungry in Chicago alleys, and when Clive spoke plain like this, it was because he saw the cliff edge Walker was pretending wasn’t there.

“Where you figure we’re findin’ her?” Walker asked at last.

Clive brushed past Walker and went into the sitting room. Sunlight coming in through the window showed all the dust in the air, big fat hazy motes of it. The floor was streaked with dirt, and the rug badly needed to be taken out and beaten.

Clive grabbed a newspaper off the arm of a chair and held it up in the air like it was a trophy-worthy animal he had just shot. “This is the answer.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Walker snatched the newspaper out of his hand. He fluttered through the thin pages, the ink smudging under his touch. “The only good this can do is if we put it in the outhouse.”

“I’m talkin’ about the personal advertisements.” Clive grabbed the paper back and flipped to a specific page, then returned it. “People who need somethin’, anythin’, write about it and if someone else can help, they meet up. Need a carpenter to repair an heirloom rocking chair or a finely bred heifer to match with a prize bull? Write about it. Need a wife? Write about it.”

“Well, if you want to do that, you don’t need my permission.”

“Not me, you empty-headed fool. You.”

For an instant, Walker simply couldn’t perceive such a statement as anything more than a bad attempt at a joke. But Clive wasn’t laughing. He looked steadily at Walker until there was no possible way his statement could be misconstrued as a joke.

He was confused, and he felt his frustration deepening into anger. His stomach clenched hard, and his hands curled into fists that had his blunt nails biting into his palms. “You’re the empty-headed fool. You can’t really expect me to write an advertisement for a wife. Not only is that downright pathetic, I don’t want no wife.”

“I know.” Clive didn’t react to his anger. Sorrow filled up his eyes, and that made Walker angrier, that his friend should feel sorry for him like this.

“Then, if you know, we’re done havin’ this talk.” Walker turned away.

“Hold on.”

“Clive.”

“No. Hold on.” His calm tone turned fierce. “I know your pain. I hurt for you. But what hurts worse is watching this ranch fall into further disrepair day after day. It’s like we’re in a hole and tryin’ to dig out at the same time as someone’s buryin’ us. They’re faster than we are. They put more dirt in than we can get out. We’re close to the point where we’ll finally be buried.”

Against his will, Walker found himself listening. Lord knew that he felt exactly the way Clive described, day after day, trying to catch up on a pile of work that only grew bigger. He, they, couldn’t do enough. They couldn’t get back on track, not on their own.

“If you write an advertisement in the paper and get a woman out here, she’ll free us up to be out there workin’. Two people doin’ the ranch work still isn’t good enough, and we both know that, but it’ll be better. Or do you want this ranch to fail?”

Walker still wouldn’t turn around and look at Clive. He didn’t want his emotions to be seen on his face, for he was unable to hide them in that moment. At least his voice remained somewhat steady. “No woman will want to be my wife. What would I even write about that could make me an option for her?”

“I done thought about this plenty. You ain’t exactly a catch, right.” Clive’s tone was teasing. Walker could tell the lightness was for his benefit.

“But you ain’t a bad man,” Clive went on. “You work hard and you’re reliable. This marriage thing doesn’t got to be about love. It can be about bein’ a kind and trustworthy person, someone who can provide a stable life while she keeps up her half of the agreement. That’s a good marriage, too.”

He didn’t want any marriage of any kind, good or bad, based on love or necessity. He’d been hurt before in such pursuits.

Clive pressed on, proving he’d been turning this over a long while. It edged close to betrayal that he’d kept it quiet. “Write about the ranch. How it could thrive, how it’s a stable home if only there’s a woman to keep it. Air’s clean. Land’s beautiful. That draws. Put it where city folk will see—California, Oregon. Those places are stuffed with dream-chasers. You don’t think there’s a woman or two who’d trade smoke and noise for sky?”

Against his will, Walker found himself considering the idea, giving it actual weight in his mind. He sure didn’t want to have to do it. But if it would help him to save his ranch, then it didn’t matter what he wanted to do, did it? After all, wasn’t he constantly doing things he didn’t want to? He didn’t want to work from sunup to sundown. He didn’t want to spend unbearable hot hours in the barn and stables dealing with manure. He didn’t want to guard his money like a hawk protecting its nest. Yet that was exactly what he did, because it was for the best.

He dragged a hand over his jaw. “All right,” he said at last, and his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “We’ll try it. I’ll write it tonight. You can run it into town in the morning.”

Clive clapped his arm. “Good man. Now eat a bite. You ain’t worth a lick to me if you drop in the yard.”

“All right, all right. Don’t patronize me,” Walker said, but the fight had gone out of it.

They ate standing at the flour-blown counter—beans and bacon with the biscuits crumbled over like gravel. Walker stirred his bowl into a slurry and took a bite. The taste wasn’t the problem. Neither of them was incapable. Time was the thief. It kept them circling the same meals, the same chores, the same weary path. Something had to change.

The decision sat heavy but set. Through the afternoon, he worked and planned his words, sorting what he would promise and what he would not. No lies. No prettying. Let the truth do the asking.

That night, in the quiet office off the hall, he lit a lantern and set the paper square. The amber light pooled across the desk and the scars in the wood. He took up the pen. The first line fought him.

He thought of the herd, the land, the wind here that smelled like rain before it came. He thought of a house that might hold warmth again if someone tended the fire who wasn’t named Clive. He thought of the parts of himself he would never offer a stranger—and of the parts he could.

Then the words came, steady and sure, as if they’d been waiting inside his chest for him to admit the need.

He wrote.

Chapter Two

Sacramento

The sharp, sour smell of sickness filled every inch of the small two-room cottage. It clung to the curtains, seeped into the wood, rode the air like a damp fog. Jolene hardly noticed it anymore—until, in an unguarded moment, she did. Then it would strike her as though fresh and new, and her own stomach would roll.

By grace or luck, she had been spared the illness so far.

At the stove, she stirred a small pot of broth, the pale liquid swirling in faint ripples. Steam rose and blurred her reflection—pale face, black hair pulled back in haste, eyes hollow from too many sleepless nights. The warmth teased her nose, and her stomach gave a low, painful growl. I’ll eat later. She hadn’t eaten since the night before; Loretta and Job had always told her she was too thin and needed to eat more.

She poured the broth into a bowl, set a spoon beside it, and carried both through the main room. The space wore many hats—kitchen by the stove, sitting room near the rocker, dining room around the table, her bed tucked against one wall. Clever arrangements had once made the cramped quarters feel cozy, purposeful. Now they pressed down on her like walls closing in.

Her gaze went to the inner door. Job and Loretta’s room.

Her heart clenched so hard she had to pause. She steadied the bowl and moved on.

At the threshold, she listened. A rattling breath drifted out—weak, uneven, but still there. Relief eased her chest. She knocked lightly and went inside.

The bedroom was cloaked in near-darkness, shadows gentled by a single candle burning low on the dresser. The flicker painted the carved wood in gold. The smell of sickness was thicker here, its source the bed, where a slight lump mounded beneath thick blankets.

“Jolene?” A crackling voice stuttered her name between effortful breaths.

“It’s me,” she whispered, setting the bowl on the nightstand. She sank into the chair at the bedside—the same chair that had imprisoned her through countless hours. She resented it, though she never left it for long.

“I brought you some broth.” She kept her voice soft; this sickness gave its sufferers terrible head pains, sensitivity to sound as well as light. “It’s chicken and herbs—thyme, bay leaf, a little garlic, and carrot.”

She dipped the spoon, scraped the rim to keep it from dripping, and held it near Loretta’s lips. “If you can keep this down, I have some rice I can add next time.”

A rusty chuckle escaped Loretta’s throat, weak but real.

Beneath the quilts lay a shadow of the woman Jolene had known. Once plump and sturdy at forty-five, Loretta was reduced now to a frail figure. Her golden hair hung stringy and damp against her cheeks. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and her eyes—once a bright, lively blue—were dulled and webbed with tiny red veins.

“I don’t feel as if I will be needing that rice,” Loretta croaked, a faint hiss sliding between cracked lips. “And I won’t be needing the broth. Save it for yourself, dear.”

Fear stabbed Jolene so sharply her hand shook. Broth dribbled onto the pillow, darkening the fabric. “If you don’t eat, you won’t get your strength back!”

But Loretta closed her lips, stubborn even in weakness.

“Silly me,” Jolene whispered, her chin trembling as her eyes filled. “You’re getting better. You look better than this morning! You aren’t coughing anymore.”

Loretta smiled faintly, sadness in every line. They both knew why the cough had ceased.

Jolene’s arms wrapped around her middle as pain twisted through her stomach. “You can’t act like this. You need to eat… You have to fight this! I won’t fail you, too. Not after Job.”

Job, Loretta’s husband, had been their pastor, their leader, her own mentor at the chapel. Jolene had run errands for him, tidied pews, delivered messages. She had been the first to notice his illness, the one who had urged Loretta to call the doctor. But he had not listened soon enough. Death had claimed him in mere weeks.

And now, one month later, it was claiming her too. It’s my fault. I haven’t done enough.

Loretta’s thin hand slid from the blankets to clasp hers. Though frail as a sapling branch, it steadied Jolene. “I am not afraid to die,” she whispered. “I can hear my Job now. He waits for me. I will be all right. And so will you.”

Tears spilled down Jolene’s cheeks. She pressed Loretta’s hand to her lips. “This can’t be happening.”

“That is my one regret, leaving you behind. I know this will be hard for you to endure. But I know that you will be all right.”

“How can you think that?” Jolene shook her head, sobbing.

“Because you are our miracle.” Loretta’s eyes glowed fierce for an instant, her jaw tightening. “When Job and I found you on the chapel steps after the flood, we knew you had been spared for a reason. Though this may be my ending, it isn’t yours, dear. You have more life to live. A wonderful life to live.”

“I don’t know how that can be true. To lose my whole family, and then lose you…”

Her tears dotted her lap, darkening the cloth.

The Great Flood of 1862 had taken thousands of lives, reshaping land and lives alike. Even now, nearly a decade later, its scars lingered—piles of debris in the hills, unmarked paupers’ graves, bones unearthed by new roads. Jolene had lost everyone.

“It was Job who found you.” Loretta’s gaze drifted to the ceiling with a faint smile, sharing the story again as if it was the first time Jolene was hearing it. “We’d gone into town that morning to deliver some supplies and came to the chapel on our way back. How miraculous to see our little church still standing on that hill. We entered through the rear door. We didn’t know you were there until Job went to prop the front doors open, to let any in need know they were welcome.”

Jolene held her breath, strangling her sobs to listen to the hoarse whisper.

“Job called me over. I’d never heard him sound such a way. I came to him and we stood there looking at you as you lay curled up on the porch steps. Like a little kitten in the sun, you were.” Loretta’s voice caught and then steadied. “Your clothes and hair had dried. But we knew you were no sleepy nipper laying down for a nap. Your face was so pale. Your lips were blue. I almost thought you were gone until I saw you breathing.”

Jolene’s blurred memories rose to meet the story. Even her earliest recollections might have been shaped by this tale told so many times.

Job and Loretta had taken her in and nursed her back. Whatever had struck her head had left her barely conscious, unable to speak or feed herself.

Gradually, awareness had returned. Jolene remembered the grief-stricken people wandering the hills, calling for the lost, their cries growing fewer as hope died. She remembered waiting for Job to return from searches with news of her family. He never had. The ranch had been swept away; her parents, Sebastian, Myrtle, even little Phillip—all gone.

Lost in a fog of pain, she hadn’t cared what happened to her. Release her to the streets, send her to an orphanage—it hadn’t mattered. Without her family, she was nothing. But Loretta and Job had done nothing of the kind.

“Sometimes…” Loretta sighed softly. “Sometimes you’ve asked me why Job and I never had children of our own. I don’t think I ever answered you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“We were simply unable to. Oh, how we wanted one.” A tear slid down Loretta’s cheek, the first real sign of sorrow. “Job came to believe it was a sign from God, reminding us that all those in our community were our children, ours to nurture and guide. When we found you and you were all alone… You weren’t only a miracle for surviving the flood. You were our miracle child, a gift for us. We took care of you as if you were ours.”

“You are my family. And now… How can God do this?”

“His ways are not ours to understand. But fear not. Even now… I’d never leave you alone.” Loretta tilted her head toward the dresser. “My dresser. The top drawer. You will find an envelope there.”

Jolene rose, legs unsteady, and slid the drawer open. An envelope sat atop neatly folded garments. She lifted it, heavy with folded papers, and carried it back.

“What is this?”

“When Job first fell ill, I decided to prepare for your future. I searched the newspapers until I found a suitable man.”

“A man?”

“I looked through personal advertisements in the paper.”

Jolene’s heart lurched. “You want me to go off and live with some man I don’t even know?”