These four short stories contain the related tales of love and family in the far reaches of America’s borders. The characters are intertwined, with each story serving as a jumping off point for that which follows. First there is Brian O’Rourke, newly emigrated from Ireland, who meets Heather Templeton in the wilderness of Oregon, then Daisy O’Rourke who wants to see the world and travels to Arizona in the hopes of finding a cowboy to love. Next Sasha Anton in the Arctic faces a harshness from land and fellow man, and finally Inga Nansen travels with her father on the steamship the Flower of Alaska.

I found the first of these four stories enjoyable, but the remaining three less so. My main complaint is that in most of the stories the author spends a good deal of time winding the stories of the leading lady and man closer and closer together. Then the two finally see each other and unfailingly fall in love at first sight. They know immediately the other is who God destined them to be with. They are not the stories of two people falling in love, which is what I expected, but stories of two people winding closer and closer until the lightening strikes and they are in love. The author would have been better to fill out each story more instead of sticking four into one book without giving the reader enough meat of a tale to work with. ( )