A Bride in the Bargain
A BRIDE I N THE BARGAI N
by Deeanne Gist
Reviewed by Jody Payne
The worst thing I can say about A Bride in the Bargain is it’s over.
You know what I mean. You pick up a book and scan the first page. It interests you enough to read the second. And the third. Pretty soon, you’re skipping lunch and the laundry piles up. You can’t seem to put it down.
The heroine, Anna Ivey, is someone you get to know and care about. She’s desperate. Her father and her brother were killed in the War Between the States, and her mother died of a broken heart. Anna blames herself.
In the south, we tend to view our own war aftermath of destruction as catastrophic, and it was. But in December of 1865, people in Massachusetts were also destitute. Wives and children of soldiers who would never return were starving and begging in the streets.
Anna found employment as a cook in a boarding house. Unfortunately, the job came with an employer, and she was forced to run for her life or at least her virtue. She makes a deal to travel to Seattle for employment. The procurer swears Joe Denton needs a cook for his logging company, and he will pay her passage.
Sounds good, right? A classic win-win solution. Well, no, not quite. Joe Denton believes he’s getting a bride.
What will happen when they meet? Now you’re hooked. You swear you’ll read just one more page.
I’ll tell you just this much without revealing too much of the plot. When Joe picks her up at the dock, he’s delighted. The girl’s a beauty, and he drives her directly to the church. Although he wasn’t particularly interested in a purchased wife, he needs one to hold onto his land. A bachelor could receive 320 acres, but a married man would get 640 acres of prime timber land. Since he is unable to prove he had been married when he claimed the 640 acres and is now widowed, the judge has given him a deadline to produce a wife.
Even though the attraction is there and growing between these two strong characters, their problems are insurmountable. Anna believes she is sudden death to anyone she loves; everyone in her family told her so just before they died. As she slowly begins to realize this is untrue and she gives the power of life and death back to God, she still resists Joe’s proposal. Believing he only wants her to marry him to keep his land, she refuses.
Joe will have to find a way to convince her he wants her for herself. He must love her more than the land.
Plan to send out for pizza and forget the laundry. You won’t put this book down until the last page and then you’ll cry because it’s over.
