Forgiving, by LaVyrle Spencer

Read and reviewed in November, 2009. Released later.

"Romance" is not my usual genre, I was not happy with all the details of every French kiss and episode of heavy petting. It did have a lot more substance than that, though, and I learned about life in a 19th century goldmining boom town: newspaper publishing and printing, law enforcement, gold mining and stamping gold dust, and the sex industry.

The gold rush town of Deadwood, in 1876, seems very much like what we were told about Skagway, Alaska and the gold rush days of 1897, when we were there last summer on a cruise. I wish I had had it to release there.
It is a story about a young woman who arrives to find her wayward sister, to set up a newspaper and printshop, and to reform the town. Her first enemy is the town's marshal, Owen Campbell.
The central characters were an unlikely foursome, two couples: a marshall, a newspaper publisher, a businessman, and a prostitute. As we know, the course of true love never runs smooth, especially in novels, but it seemed unusually rocky for these four.