When Win Kirkland left the Marine Corps Intelligence Agency after twenty-five years, she thought she’d left war behind. But a sniper’s shot through her front window soon ends the tranquility she’d been seeking. It also brings Sheriff Sarah Barrow Pitt—her one time best friend—back into her life. For her part, the Sheriff has fought crime her entire life. But her latest battle seems to be keeping her own job in a deeply conservative area. She and Win were once close, until an unguarded moment profoundly altered their friendship. Now Win is in trouble—and doesn’t want her help. As evils of the past and present threaten to engulf them both, admitting to their feelings might just pose the most dangerous risk of all.

Welcome to McCrumb County, Indiana, where retired Marine Corps Colonel Win Kirkland and Sheriff Sarah Pitt had hoped that their deepening relationship might bring some peace and order to their complicated lives. Freed from the closeted life after 25 years in the military, Win is fiercely out and proud—and ready for Sarah to move in. But the newly out Sarah has serious doubts about living as an open lesbian among her county’s conservative population. She longs to overcome her fear of exposure, especially since several gorgeous and exotic women seem intent on seducing Win—and she knows she could lose Win to them or to a bullet. Win and Sarah’s personal struggles are soon overshadowed by a series of local and international crimes that will blur the lines between hostility and horror, friend and foe, sacrifice and survival. A Woman of Strong Purpose is the heart-pounding follow-up to S. M. Harding’s popular romantic mystery I Will Meet You There.