Wilderness Road — Mary Anne Butler

A Road Opens Westward and a Frightening Past is Left Behind. A handsome patent medicine peddler steals the heart of Lizzie Mueller, Heinrich Mueller's daughter, who is intent on breaking 19th century constraints that anchor women to home and hearth. But when a diamond and pearl ring links him to two violent crimes, sending him to jail, the devastated Lizzie leaves Baltimore and returns to her family. She marries a steady man for whom the Ohio frontier beckons. They leave a comfortable Maryland home to travel over the new National Road, funded in 1806 by the Federal Government, to encourage trade and settlement in the west. With hard work and terrible losses they finally establish a backwoods homestead in the new state. But when her first love reappears, Lizzie is conflicted in ways she could never have imagined or anticipated. Wilderness Road is a re-publication of an earlier work by Ms. Butler called: The Good Wife.