Naturopathic Doctor Sunday Frederick can’t seem to shake her backwater roots. After years of rubbing elbows with Austin’s elite, she jumps at the chance to practice natural medicine in her beloved hometown and escape the concrete jungle in favor of a simpler life with fiancé Jeffrey Frost. But returning to the sleepy East Texas community of Old Salem with a fast-talking fiancé in tow proves more of a challenge than Sunday ever expected.

After one look at the Frederick family’s twenty-thousand-acre estate, Jeffrey has big dreams of converting the historic property into a prosperous game ranch. But when his ambitions drive threaten to drive a wedge between Sunday and her close-knit kin, she struggles to balance his desires for their future with the best interests of her family and the surrounding community—a fight that is further complicated when she is called away on a special wildcrafting assignment in the swampy, mosquito-infested river bottom of her youth.

To her dismay, hometown rebel, Eli LeBlanc, is tasked to serve as Sunday’s guide while hosting her at his dilapidated houseboat. With his crude manners and outlaw ways, Eli hasn’t changed a bit since high school, and Sunday has better things to do than answer his prying questions about her personal affairs. But as the days pass and the balmy night air is filled with the sound of crickets and softly rushing water, there’s a freedom and hospitality to river life that can alter a girl’s priorities and open her heart. With her wedding to Jeffrey only weeks away, and the future of her family’s estate resting on her shoulders, Sunday finds herself torn between everything she thought she wanted and the surprising new path she feels destined to take.

Genre: Literary Romance/Southern Romance

Published: October 2022