Ellie Lambert looked at her two friends and smiled. Maybe she had expected them to understand, to support her decision, but it didn’t matter. Not much, anyway. She had had an epiphany. Her mind was made up.
Sometimes life changes on a dime, she realized. You’re plodding along in one direction and poof! You’re headed somewhere totally different, like Robert Frost’s two roads diverged, and this damn well was not going to be the road not taken. It might be a death, a birth, a divorce, a revelation or, like now, a crazy epiphany. You might be in the right place at the wrong time or the wrong place at the right time. Or just maybe, if the planets align, you might be in the right place at the right time. Of course, if you’re human, it might take you awhile to realize this. So then maybe life changes on a quarter. Or even on a fifty-cent piece. Do they even make those anymore?
“Starting today maybe I do do crazy. I’ll be fine,” she told her friends, and she knew she would be.

Barely hearing the rustle of petticoats beneath her silk gown, Libby Parminter wondered if the entire household could hear the thud of her heart as she slowly descended the winding staircase. She slid her hand lightly along the polished mahogany banister, yearning to be almost anywhere else. She wanted to run and not stop running until she joined up with the heroine of Fort Laramie, the fearless maid of Wyoming or another of the intrepid women in her prized dime novels.

Only two weeks ago, Susan B. Anthony had been fined for the audacity of trying to vote. The crusader was risking condemnation and abuse to give women more control over their lives and more opportunities and here Libby was afraid to meet her own father. She stopped a few steps from the bottom and took a deep breath. Courage. Maybe Libby wasn’t changing the world, but surely she could face one man.

Later, when she looked back on that sultry June day, she could see not the slightest hint of the cataclysmic sequence of events that would follow. At the time, she had no idea why Papa would summon her to his decidedly male and … Buy Now

What could Carter possibly have to say to her that she needed to leave the comfort of the Pullman car and meet him in the next car? Jenna Dunne smoothed the skirt of her navy blue traveling dress as she looked over her shoulder. Her father, Rexwell Dunne, had retired early. She turned, walked back and peeked behind the privacy partition concealing his upper berth to confirm that he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. She smiled at his weathered face and hair so gray she could barely see a few flecks of his once luscious black mane. Even in repose, she still could see the strength that remained. And the character.

They had not discussed it—it was not his way—but she knew her father was dying. Each day he seemed to walk a little slower and sleep a little longer. On this grand continental railroad trip, they had stopped in Chicago to visit his sister and in Omaha to see an old friend. It’s his mortality tour. It was a morbid thought, but she knew in her heart it was true, and she was trying to treasure every moment of…Buy Now