Karen Wills Knihy

"In 1905, Rebecca Bryan, the first woman to practice law in Kalispell, Montana, is sent by her uncle/ senior partner to a remote hunting lodge near the Canadian border. She's to find the missing will of his deceased longtime love, the wealthy artist Lucinda Cale. After a broken coach wheel forces her to set out in the winter forest at night, she meets Lucinda's compelling son, Bretton. Next morning, he takes her to Eagle Mountain where she meets the rest of the dysfunctional Cale family. There Rebecca also discovers Lucinda's hidden diaries, which tell of a naive bride's victimization that hardened her into a manipulative, murderous matriarch. Lucinda's estate is large. Each heir is desperate. Those involved reveal themselves to be All Too Human"--

"In frontier historical novel River with No Bridge, Nora Flanagan, at age eighteen, leaves Boston in 1882 to marry a miner in Butte, Montana. She anticipates achieving the respectability and security denied her as a tinker's daughter in Ireland. Instead, she experiences tragedy, disgrace, and redemption. Three men love her: her husband who dies in a mine explosion; the secretive gambler who abandons her, leaving her pregnant; and half-Chinese Jim Li who becomes her life partner despite prejudice against them. In the course of her life, Nora survives her daughter's death, relinquishes her son, homesteads in the wilderness, and raises a Blackfeet girl. She learns to cherish the beauty and healing power of nature surrounding the North Fork of the Flathead River. "--