Defiant Desire — Kaye Wilson Klem

WIDOWED BY A BULLET, SHE PURSUES JUSTICE.

Alane Drummond buys into a Tacoma, Washington, newspaper after her young husband is shot trying to stop a lynching by the Vigilantes. Bent on bringing his killers to justice, she writes an editorial that spurs lumber baron Cordell Stanton, head of the Vigilantes, to threaten her. Instead he wants her, and she realizes an affair with him may be her only way to find the truth. Her reluctant co-editor on the paper, Thorne Lockwood, fights his attraction to Lane and his own dislike of the Vigilantes, and Lane takes in a pregnant Chinese girl rejected by the man who bought her at a slave auction on the waterfront. When a mob tries to deport the city's Chinese, Lane and Thorne are caught in the violence, and both of them must stand together and face their feelings for one another.