Paint the Wind — Cathy Cash Spellman

1864. A plantation is ravaged by border raiders. Ten-year-old Fancy Deverell is saved by a wise old slave named Atticus, who sets her on an extraordinary journey that will lead her headlong into the rough-and-tumble days of the Old West. The novel sweeps along with the relentless rhythm of those turbulent times...from a westering circus train to the gold and silver fields of Colorado, from the cutthroat world of the New York stage and the arcane shadows of magic and mysticism to the last legendary and tragic struggles of Geronimo and the Apache Nation.

To survive, Fancy must learn what it takes for a woman to climb from poverty to fame and fortune in a universe that belongs to the ruthless and the male. Before she's through, there isn't much that Fancy won't have done, or bargained, or sold for her dreams...and the price of her deliverance. For Paint The Wind is first and last the story of feisty, tempestuous, and vulnerable Fancy Deverell. Far too beautiful for her own good, she wants it all - love, power, money, security - and she'll get it, too, if she can keep her heart out of the way of the three men who so desperately want her:

CHANCE McALLISTER - his gambler's luck is legendary, like his prowess in bed, and Chance is precisely the kind of rogue Fancy wants.

HART McALLISTER - a giant of a man with a soul and talent to match, Chance's brother is an artist whose paintings of the dying Apache Nation will hang in the Louvre...but it won't mean a damn to him if he can't have Fancy.

JASON MADIGAN - a wizard at making deals and breaking lesser men, is someone who kills for sport. And Fancy is the only woman he has ever needed to own, whatever the cost.

Fancy's journey is a tale of self-discovery and of spiritual growth that takes as many strange turns as life itself. The men and women who bring their dreams and drives to it are as colorful and various as the thousands who journeyed west: the stalwart, honorable madam and the gunfighter who loves her...the brilliant dwarf with the secret past...the cunning Chinese wise man who knows the cure for opium addiction...the old prospector who would sacrifice everything but integrity for the Mother Lode...the thespian who yearns for one last great role to play...the mysterious Gypsy who mastered the forbidden arts and now must win back her soul.