The Path To Her Heart

Linda Ford
Inspirational Historical Romance
Steeple Hill Books – Jan – 2009

Favor, South Dakota 1934

Can a woman who is a nurse and a man who hates the medical profession find happiness together?

Emma was a nurse. She loved being a nurse but longed to be a wife, and mom. Yet, for some reason, she felt she could never marry. She acted like she didn’t deserve happiness.

I had to wonder why she might have felt that way. Low self esteem is one possibility. A bad experience with a man is another. Obviously, she wasn’t too sure of herself. However, she was very sure that she was an excellent nurse. That was her strength.

Boothe had come to help his aunt with the boarding house. He was a widower with a six year old son, Jessie. Jessie had a deep cut on his arm that needed cleaning and stitches. Emma mentioned that and Boothe became immediately angry. He let it be known in no uncertain terms that he would never let anyone in the medical profession touch his son. It turns out that his wife died from an overdose of quinine. Both a doctor and a nurse were involved in that error.

Boothe’s brother and sister-in-law wanted to adopt Jessie. Boothe was afraid of losing his son. He was still grieving the death of his wife and the possibility of losing his son was more than he could bear. He had lost his faith in medicine, but he needed to care for his son. That was quite a conflict. He felt pressured from all directions and in the process he had lost his faith in God.

I don’t think that Boothe would have reacted the way he did if he hadn’t been faced with so many problems at one time. Plus the problems got worse before they got better. That forced him to make decisions that he would have preferred to ignore. His grief, the depression, the threat of having his son taken away, and the other disasters that kept coming were debilitating to say the least. I had to empathize with him!

We learn from this well-written book how Emma and Boothe deal with their problems. Aren’t we glad that romance novels always have happy endings? You’ll enjoy the journey through this book.