You can choose your own path, but life may still blow you off course.

Kate Palmer wants to pursue a career as a poet. As society life in Philadelphia—not to mention the expectations of marriage and motherhood—strictly limits her independence, Kate has taken a job as a schoolmarm in the Oklahoma territory. While she embraces her new freedom to write, her chosen life presents more difficulties than she’d anticipated. Primary among them is an abrasive relationship with Thomas Newhall, the man who hired her. Thomas, a still-grieving widower with two school-age children, finds Kate both extremely attractive and surprisingly prickly as she has the audacity to stand up for herself and her ideals.

Then a tornado twists their lives together.

Their verbal skirmishes notwithstanding, Kate’s biggest challenge comes when a tornado destroys her little cottage, unexpectedly twisting their lives together as Kate is obliged to move into the Newhall family home. When Thomas declares his love for her, Kate must face her own feelings for him and decide if she can remain true to her dreams while accepting the fulfillment that comes with love.

This clean/sweet/proper (no sex) enemies-to-lovers romance, which touches on themes such as independence, grief, and women’s rights, is set in the American West in the late 19th century. Book club discussion prompts included.