Women Of Paragon Springs Series

Cassiday Curran's wagon has just been hijacked by three bedraggled strangers on their way to Dodge City. On the run from an abusive husband, Cassiday agrees to share her wagon with the thieves as they search for their uncle. When the group arrives in Dodge City, they learn that the uncle has died, leaving only a small tract of land to the nephew. Cassiday soon trades for another parcel and they build themselves a home. Harassed by a cattle rancher who wants her land, and in constant fear of the bounty hunter her husband has hired to find her, Cassiday struggles to maintain her farm and find a way to free herself from the past.

Meg Brennon knows that her new life at her road ranch in Paragon Springs, Kansas, can't truly begin until she severs all ties with the abusive husband she'd fled years before. Although fearful, she returns to St. Louis determined to find him and obtain a divorce. But Ted Malloy refuses, hoping that Meg's return will win him his dying father's favor, and fortune. It's going to be a long hard fight, but Meg can't afford to stay away from Kansas and a simmering range war. Reluctantly, she places her destiny in the hands of her likable lawyer, Hamilton Gibbs. Back in Kansas, Meg continues to battle rancher Jack Ambler. And by the time Hamilton Gibbs wins Meg's divorce in St. Louis, he has also won her heart. Before long, they're building a family in Paragon Springs. Then Meg brings the range hostilities to a breaking point by selling the farmers barbed wire to protect their crops from Ambler's cattle. On a wire-cutting spree, Jack ambler goes too far.

A hard, high plains life has turned refined southern lady, Aurelia Symington, into a work-toughened, capable woman determined to give her best to those she loves. Aurelia is chosen president of the town company when the residents decide they must make the community of Paragon Springs into a real town or move elsewhere. Step by step, Aurelia lays out the town, promotes it, and attracts businesses and families. Boot Harris, for his own profit and through fraud and violence, threatens the future of Paragon Springs. A western Kansas town can't survive unless it is the county seat and has a railroad and Aurelia goes after these improvement, but with the depression of the 1890s, two-thirds of the population leave for the Cherokee Run. Could this be a death-knell ringing for Paragon Springs?

Lucy Walsh's heart remains with the struggling town of Paragon Springs, but she feels beholden to her husband, Admire, to make the Run to the Cherokee Strip for new land. Admire married her when few men would have, and raised her half-Sioux daughter, Rachel, as his own. When Admire is killed for his Strip claim, Lucy, grieving, leases the land to his cowboy friends and returns to Paragon Springs and gets by on her tidy farm. In 1910, an eccentric new neighbor, Tom Reilly, begins building a new-fangled "aeroplane" in his barn. Lucy, convinced that he is onto something that could help her town, is determined to build an aeroplane plant with oil money she has come into from her Oklahoma land. Together, they face ridicule from friends and family, go to air shows and learn from other aviation pioneers, and deal with the shallow aviatrix Sophie, in order to find a way to lay out plans for Paragon Spring's future.