Silent Night, Star-Lit Night — Ruth Logan Herne

Welcome to Heywood, Oregon where three lost women find healing, hope and love under the bright light of the town's old Star Inn this Christmas season.

Jed Taylor knows how to cowboy up on the range, and on the sales' floor of his family's rapidly growing western and ranch store in Central Washington, which is exactly where he would normally be a week before Christmas… but when he heard Mia O'Loughlin was planning a trip north, pregnant and alone, Jed's promise to her late husband kicked in. More Grinch than grace, he boarded a plane and headed to the coast, determined that his best friend's widow wouldn't make the long trek alone.
It wasn't supposed to be like this, widowed, pregnant and all alone on the West Coast.

E.R. nurse and Red Cross emergency responder Mia O'Loughlin had always taken life in full stride, but losing her deployed husband the week before she realized they were expecting their first child knocked her off-kilter. With Christmas and her due date approaching, all she can see is getting back home to Kittitas County for the birth of her child… their child… and seeing her failing Grandpa Joe one last time. Determined to do it on her own, she reluctantly allows Jed to accompany her, mostly because the gruff cowboy showed up and won't take no for an answer.

But when a blizzard grinds their progress to a stop in Northern Oregon, the light from an old inn beckons them into a town hunkered down to ride out the unexpected storm. With the help of the inn's wise and wonderful “angel,” Mia realizes the old white church has been turned into a shelter. She insists on leaving the inn to help those forced out of their homes and off the highway. As she and Jed improvise to provide comfort to others, they begin to see that facing this once-dreaded Christmas together could be the very best way of all.