Deep in the Heart — Celia Hayes

Margaret Becker Vining's life in frontier Texas was extraordinary. She knew everyone who was anyone in the Republic of Texas: the widowed mother of four sons, a political hostess, a friend, a witness to the early days ... and a survivor of war and heartbreak.

Margaret had been there in the beginning, from the day that she arrived in Stephen Austin's land grant at the age of twelve with her two younger brothers, and a mysterious witch-woman looked at the palms of her hands and told her that she would marry - once for love and once again for friendship. Margaret would live in a big house and have many friends, although few of them would ever know her heart, the witch told her. And much of what was foretold has come true; she did marry for love, to schoolteacher Horace "Race" Vining, and when he died of TB in the east, Margaret must look to her own strengths to care for their four sons. She has no other choices than to run her father's house in Austin - the primitive frontier capital city of the Republic of Texas - as a boarding-house. There she meets again with Sam Houston, and makes friends with his wife, Margaret Lea Houston, the indomitable Angelina Eberly, Thomas "Peg-Leg" Moore, and Texas Ranger captain Jack Hays. Meanwhile, Margaret's younger brother Carl, a survivor of the Goliad massacre, serves as a volunteer Texas Ranger in the ongoing war with the Comanche. The survival of Austin - indeed, the republic itself - is a close-run thing. Comanche Indian raids, another invasion from Mexico, treacherous international dealings, Sam Houston's desire to move the seat of government elsewhere all pose a threat to the lives of Margaret's friends and her sons. And Margaret herself despairs of ever finding love again, even though the witches' prophecy did say that she would marry twice.