She is a spinster from Philadelphia and expects to pick them up and take them home in the blink of an eye. Olive Wilkins heads to Ohio to pick up her niece and nephew when she finds out that her brother and his wife have been killed. Will Olive and Jacob find the strength to fight their battles alone or together? Will love conquer the bitterness of loss and broken dreams? Real danger threatens Olive and Mary and John while Jacob and his own brood battle the day-to-day struggles for survival. Her niece and nephew, Mary and John, have been living with a neighboring farmer, widower Jacob Butler, the father of three young children of his own and a man still in pain from the recent loss of his wife. She arrives to find the circumstances of her brother’s life deplorable and her long held beliefs of family and tradition, shaken.Īccustomed to the sophistication of Philadelphia, Olive arrives in Spencer, Ohio, a rough and tumble world she is not familiar with, facing two traumatized children. I n 1891, spinster librarian, Olive Wilkins, is shocked to learn of her brother’s violent death at a saloon gaming table and her sister-in-law’s subsequent murder, traveling far from her staid life to rescue her niece and nephew, now orphans.

Reconstructing Jackson contains some violent scenes and some use of offensive racial language in dialogue, true to the period and circumstances.Tracy’s review of Romancing Olive by Holly Bush Reed is captivated by Belle from their first meeting, but he is wheelchair bound, and unable to protect her from violence.īleak times will challenge Reed and Belle's courage and dreams as they forge a new beginning from the ashes of war and ignorance.

But Belle's got other plans, and risks her life to reach them. A violent brother and a drunken father plot to marry her off, and gain a new horse in the bargain. Angry and bitter, Reed moves west to Fenton, Missouri, home to a cousin with a successful business, intending to start over.īelle Richards, a dirt poor farm girl aching to learn how to read, cleans, cooks, and holds together her family's meager property. His father deems him unfit, and deeds the Jackson holdings, including his intended bride, to a younger brother. Southern lawyer and Civil War veteran, Reed Jackson, returns to his family's plantation in a wheelchair.