Westward Wanted

Carrie Grinnell put all her hopes and her few possessions in a carpet bag and boarded a train heading West. She had found a husband through an advertisement for a mail order bride. Carrie gets off the train anxious to meet her intended Mr. Bowen, a cattle rancher, but he is nowhere to be found. In his stead is a cowboy sent to fetch her.

Miss Savannah Winter leaves Georgia for the small town of Dovetail, Texas to be a mail order bride. This big step seems her best chance to find a husband. After all she is twenty-four and a schoolmarm on the fast track to spinsterhood. Wearing her best hat and her bravest face, she steps off the train expecting to find a respectable marriageable man waiting for her. Specifically she expects to be met by "a fine-looking bachelor rancher of twenty-six years of age in need of a cheerful, sturdy and well-mannered wife."

A Louisiana belle, turned schoolmarm, and a handsome cowboy join up to look out for his stubborn little sister who insists on traveling to Texas to be a mail order bride. The belle, Adeline Harrington wants only to be a teacher, but there are no schools in her neck of Louisiana in need of one. After losing her fiancé; to the war, her desire to marry died, and her calling became clear. In contrast, her friend, carefree extroverted Marjorie Landor, is determined to marry even if it means becoming a mail order bride.

It was not Violet Gladstone's idea to become a mail order bride. She felt it was foolhardy for a woman to leave everything behind to marry a man she had never met. However, when her greedy boyfriend, Ned, jilted her for a rich woman, her friend convinced her to answer an ad. Soon, she was exchanging letters with a nice widower who wanted to wed her. For months, they wrote to each other. All his letters were charming, except the last one. It contained an ultimatum: marry him now or never. He could wait no longer.

This Christmas, the only wish the lonely handsome cowboy has is for a bride, someone to be his everything. His advertisement in The Matrimony Messenger consists of his photograph and two words. Southern Belle Charlotte Baxter, the overindulged child of a widower, sees his ad. Something in Jett's eyes makes her believe he is the one for her and compels her to answer his ad. She is after adventure and romance on the wild frontier. He is seeking contentment and true love.