The Darker Star — Mary Frances Doner

It was like a dream come true for white-haired Owen Kildare, confined to wheelchair, when he first set eyes on his great-niece, Irish-featured Kitty Kildare. She was almost a carbon copy of her grandmother, Owen's beloved sister, who had eloped decades before and had never returned to the Kildare's lush Michigan produce farm.

Deprived of the finer things in life by her grandmother's impetuousness, Kitty had a job as a waitress in a bus-stop restaurant near Columbus, Ohio. She had heard of Gourmet Grove through a customer, who knew only that the farm's owner shared Kitty's surname. Spurred by her longing to a claim a family, orphaned Kitty arrived at the elegant estate armed with nothing but hope and a faded photograph.

Though unschooled in speech or etiquette and sometimes inappropriately dressed and coiffed, Kitty had a frankness and a generosity that appealed to her great-uncle as much as they horrified her plain, grave-eyed cousin, Louise Kildare, well versed in the nuances of high society.

Proud Louise's dismay was heightened by the silent but obvious magnetism between Kitty and handsome, arrogant Reed Chilvers, an upper-echelon man in nearby Bigelow Chemical Company and the only potential suitor who met Louise's uncompromising standards. Louise's alarm was matched by the hopeless panic of Kitty and Reed, for no two opposites could have attracted with more bittersweet intensity.

Hero: Reed Chilvers
Heroine: Kitty Kildare