The recap
Whitney, Georgia, in 1941, with America on the brink of the Second World War. Elly Dinsmore is a young widow with two small children and a third on the way, struggling to keep a ramshackle farm going on her own. Out of options, she places a blunt notice in the local paper: wanted, a husband. The man who answers is Will Parker, an ex-convict who has just been fired from his job at the town sawmill and who expects nothing from anyone. What begins as a practical arrangement between two wary, lonely people grows, one chore and one meal at a time, into something much richer. LaVyrle Spencer writes with great tenderness about ordinary things, from patching up a house to learning to be kind to someone who has rarely known kindness, and her portrait of two outsiders slowly learning to trust each other is deeply affecting. This is a romance with dust on its boots and an enormous heart, and it remains a word-of-mouth treasure among readers who stumble upon it decades later.
Why read it
For readers who love slow, tender romances about wounded people, and for anyone who wants a historical love story set far from the ballroom, among hard work and small kindnesses.
Fun facts
- 01
It was Spencer's hardcover debut after years of bestselling paperback historicals, a move Publishers Weekly predicted her fans would welcome.
- 02
Deborah Raffin co-wrote and starred in a 1993 film adaptation opposite Christopher Reeve.
- 03
Raffin and her then-husband Michael Viner bought the film rights in 1990, and the movie became the first feature produced by their audiobook company, Dove Audio.
- 04
All About Romance has named it one of its Top 100 Romances.
- 05
Spencer was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame in 1988 and retired from writing in 1997.
