The Sweetwater Trail — N.L. Campbell

Felicity Sinclair slept between silk sheets in New York … but on the trail to the Oregon Territory, she's awake at night, wrapped in a quilt of regret. Her father's railroad swindle cost Felicity everything, including her engagement to Edmund Ormond. But Felicity isn't the demure debutante she appears to be. She rolls up her lace edged sleeves to survive the trail to the Oregon Territory, a journey of 2,000 miles of trial and error, where every mile travelled is drier than the one before. Where the game is scarce and the graves common, and life depends on keeping the oxen alive. Rye Jones, with eyes as cold as a Kansas river crossing, studies her at night over the campfire. How much of her father's deceptive wiles did Felicity inherit? The wagon train leader invested in the Garrety-Brown Railroad and lost his medical practice, his wife and his child. But Rye is drawn to Felicity by her determination to leave her past in the prairie grass. Felicity must choose: a scratched out existence in the Oregon wilderness with Rye or escape to a life of ease in New York with Edmund.