All Aboard for Paradise — Dee Marvine

The author of Last Chance, which was nominated for the Western Writers of America Best First Novel award, brings the California frontier to life. . . . The sleepy village of Los Angeles suddenly awakens in March, 1886, when a fare war reduces the price of a one-way ticket to just one dollar, and the railroads advertise the southern California desert as a "paradise on earth." Longing to escape her drab life in Missouri, Claire Chadwick, single 34-year-old mother of 15-year-old Joanna, seizes the opportunity and rides an immigrant train that carries them west. On the train, Randy Plank, an ambitious young adventurer, falls in love with her. She comes to care for him, but her daughter, too, is smitten with Randy. Arriving in burgeoning Los Angeles, their lives unfold with the land boom that within two years brings 200,000 people to the unlikely "paradise." Claire plunges into the real-estate scramble and, with pluck and luck, rides the wave of the land boom to build a business. Assisted along the way by handsome bank manager Harry Graham, who also falls in love with her; eccentric McKenzie Tate, real estate tycoon; and dynamic Farley Dodd, her employer who is running for mayor, Claire achieves the financial security she seeks for herself and her daughter. But the boom is followed by the inevitable bust, and Claire must choose between a safe marriage and her determination to save her hard-won business and retain her independence.

Dee Marvine lives in Big Timber, Montana.