At seventeen, Abby Market left the only home she'd ever known—Missouri—in a covered wagon bound for California. With her sister and hard-drinking father in tow, she needed all her strength for the long trek westward. But Abby could hold her own with any man, until she met a rugged gunman named Rourke...a man who roused the unspoken yearnings of her passionate soul. Rourke was a battle-scarred Union veteran, hired to guard the wagon train. A loner by choice and by fate, his heart was moved by Abby's plight—though the young beauty proudly refused his aid. Yet with the wagons rolling on through dusty plains and treacherous deserts, a tenderness bloomed between them as he taught her how to survive in a brutal land. Mile by mile, she grew to adore this magnificent man, and when he touched her she longed to be his alone. But as she tasted rapture's first, wild depths, she faced a bitter secret from the gunman's violent past. With Rourke in mortal danger, they would challenge destiny itself—to save the love and happiness they discovered on a perilous...Passage West...
Author
Ruth Ryan Langan (aka Ruth Langan) is an award-winning author of romance novels. She is a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award winner and has twice been nominated for Romantic Times Reviwers' Choice Awards, for Jade and Return of the Prodigal Son. She has spent much of her career writing historical romance novels for the Harlequin Historicals line of category romances. Many of her book are set in medieval times, while others are western romances. She has also written some contemporary romances, and often includes elements of suspense in her novels. Langan began her writing career in secret. Her family discovered her writings when her children came home unexpectedly from school one day and found her writing. When Langan's husband was told of her hobby, he bought her an electric typewriter "because 'writers need tools'". Her first book was published by Silhouette Books in 1981 after an editor picked it out of their slush pile. After the first sale was completed, Langan got an agent. Langan is a charter member of the Romance Writers of America. She has five children and lives with her husband in Michigan. Has also written under the name of Ruth Langan and R.C. Ryan
