The Colonel's Lady by Laura Frantz

As you all know, I've been participating in the Christian Fiction Bloggers "Book Cover Bingo" game on Goodreads. If you haven't joined Goodreads, I highly recommend it. I've connected with some many cool people in the various groups through Goodreads and learned about countless new authors. Anyway, I read The Colonel's Lady for the Book Cover Bingo locket cover. Here's my review!

Overview: Can love survive the secrets kept buried within a tormented heart?

Roxanna Rowan may be a genteel Virginia woman, but she is determined to brave the wilds of the untamed frontier to reach a remote Kentucky fort. Eager to reunite with her father, who serves under Colonel Cassius McLinn, Roxanna is devastated to find that her father has been killed on a campaign.

Penniless and out of options, Roxanna is forced to remain at the fort. As she spends more and more time with the fiery Colonel McLinn, the fort is abuzz with intrigue and innuendo. Can Roxanna truly know who the colonel is—and what he's done?

Immerse yourself in this powerful story of love, faith, and forgiveness set in the tumultuous world of the frontier in 1779.

My Review:  I have been waiting for a chance to read this book since I received in for Christmas two years ago. I have heard so many good things about this author's books, and I wasn't disappointed. Let me start off by saying I generally tend to stay away from books so closely related to war and war-like times for personal reasons, so I was a little hesitant when I started reading this book and realized it was set in the middle of a war. However, as I got further into the book, the war faded from my mind because the author does such a wonderful job of bringing her characters to life. The plot is set in Kentucky at Fort Endeavor. The author gives such a rich description of life on the remote Kentucky fort that I felt like I was living in that time! The picture she painted was bleak and depressing at times, as I'm sure it was for some of the soldiers who were sent to the remote forts with no settlements near. 

The main characters, Roxanna Rowan and Colonel Cassius McLinn, were very well developed in my opinion. Because the author does not focus too much on the secondary characters, even though they were important to the story, I feel like I really got to know Roxie and Cass and could feel their emotions and love, as they did. There were times when I could have shaken both of them silly because of their stubbornness and hard-headed ways. I loved watching their lives unfold individually and together.

For a Christian novel, I was surprised as the amount of drinking that was done in the book. However, it was vitally important to the story. For one, the remoteness of the fort caused soldier morale to slip very easily. Giving the soldiers something to numb their pain was probably one of the only ways to keep their morale up. Second, it allowed the reader to really connect with the changes in Cass throughout the book. The author, by no means, glamorized the drunken state of things. Instead, she effectively showed the reader that drinking does nothing but numb the pain for a short time. The only thing that Cass could rely on to take the pain away and ease his guilt was God. The author does a fantastic job of showing both Cass' and Roxie's spiritual development.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I would love to read more by this author!

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