But the sheriff, Jesse Wolfe, thinks there was something fishy about the widow’s story, and he is determined to discover what it is. Tainted by a failed marriage to a socialite who left him and their sickly daughter and returned to her comfortable life, he concentrates on caring for his daughter. Hired as the little girl’s tutor, Tansy begins to not only fall in love with the child, but also with the tall, handsome, often terse and overprotective father. Unbeknownst to both, a tragic history ties them together, and by the time Jesse discovers what it is, he has already fallen in love.
A valued pocket watch sold to a jeweler hundreds of miles away causes her husband to believe she may still be alive. A bounty hunter sent by Tansy’s husband innocently alerts Jesse to the secret that painfully ties them together.
Before Jesse can confront Tansy, she is abducted by her husband and whisked away to be permanently institutionalized for ‘melancholia’. A secret note in a beloved novel provides clues to her husband’s past and puts her family on the trail to save her.
Jesse must follow the trail as well and find a way to rescue Tansy and finally learn the truth.
Jane’s first historical romance, Secrets of a Midnight Moon, was heralded as ‘sensitive and sensuous, violent and tender.’
“I found the plot to my first novel in a little known history of Northern California Indians when I learned that Native Americans were being taken as slaves by the settlers, their families threatened with death and dismemberment if they tried to leave. Yes, one can weave a romance around such an appalling event!”
Since then she has published nine full length novels and four anthologies, all dealing with the perils and passions of romantic historical fiction.
She graduated from the University of Minnesota majoring in American and Russian History revealing that, “while all of my stories are set in the US, I had hoped one day to set one in Russia, though in my opinion, the best ones have already been written.”
Jane continues to write and also edits for Melange Books. She currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her husband, Richard Noer.