Love's healing touch... Carrie Wiggins is as shy as she is stunningly beautiful. But the devastating secret that shattered her girlhood has left her terrified of the very love she desperately longs for. Only in the wild beauty of the mountains does she feel safe from the feelings she stirs in men and the cruel mockery of Wayne's Crossing's villagers. Handsome, aristocratic Tyler Wilkes had turned his back on social privilege and professional honors to set up a medical practice in the rural turn-of-the-century town of Wayne's Crossing, Pennsylvania. There, serving those who need him the most, he hopes to forget the bitter memories and weariness that haunt his days. Chance brings this sophisticated doctor and this fawn-like mountain girl together. But something as strong as fate breaks through the barriers of birth and breeding, pride and fear, which have kept them apart...as each seeks to heal the other's wounds with a passion neither can deny and all the odds against them cannot defeat...
Author
Patricia Gaffney was born in Tampa, Florida, and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, and also studied literature at Royal Holloway College of the University of London, at George Washington University, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After college, Gaffney taught 12th grade English for a year before becoming a freelance court reporter, a job she pursued in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., for the next fifteen years. Her first book, a historical romance, was published by Dorchester in 1989. Between then and 1997, she wrote 11 more romance novels (Dorchester; Penguin USA), for which she was nominated for or won many awards. Many of these previously out of print classics are available again today as digitally reissued classics, including the author's most recently re-released and much beloved novels in The Wyckerley Trilogy. In 1999, she went in a new direction with her hardcover fiction debut, The Saving Graces (HarperCollins). A contemporary story about four women friends, the novel explored issues of love, friendship, trust, and commitment among women. The Saving Graces enjoyed bestseller status on the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and other lists. Circle of Three (2000), Flight Lessons (2002), and The Goodbye Summer (2004) followed, all national bestsellers. Gaffney’s most recent novel was Mad Dash (2007), a humorous but insightful look at a 20-year marriage, told from the viewpoints of both longsuffering spouses. More recently, Pat's been indulging her purely creative side in a brand new format for her—novellas. With friends including J. D. Robb, she has contributed stories to three anthologies, all New York Times bestsellers. In "The Dog Days of Laurie Summer" (The Lost, 2009), a woman in a troubled marriage "dies" and comes back as the family dog. "The Dancing Ghost" (The Other Side, 2010) brings together a pretty spinster and a shady ghost buster in 1895 New England. And in "Dear One" (The Unquiet, 2011), a fake phone psychic (or IS she?) meets her match in a stuffy Capitol Hill lobbyist—who couldn't possibly be that sexy-voiced cowboy from Medicine Bend who keeps calling the psychic line. Patricia Gaffney lives in southern Pennsylvania with her husband.
