“Vaughan possesses a remarkable command of place and sensation. Readers will feel the whalebone stays digging into Sabrina’s sides as her mother laces her to fit a too-tight gown.” —CRESCENT BLUES BOOK VIEWS

Fort Davis, Department of Texas, 1868. Sabrina Bolton lives with an omnipresent feeling of guilt: her twin sister’s death when the girls were five left their mother in a perpetual state of melancholy. Now, fourteen years later, everything Sabrina does brings the admonishment “Proper young ladies don’t…”

Sabrina wants more. She wants to treat people at the post hospital; she wants to work at her father’s off-base mercantile with her friend, Rosa Ramírez; and she wants romance. Then her mother makes the ultimate choice—a suitor for Sabrina. Sabrina cannot summon one romantic feeing for Captain Lon Jasper. Indeed, he criticizes her behavior as much as her mother does.

Then the man called Tremayne rides onto the base and straight into Sabrina’s heart. Tremayne was reared by Apaches after his parents were murdered by unknown assailants, and he considers himself an outcast in both worlds. To him, all white-eyes women are witless. As if to prove the point, he almost runs down a fiery-haired woman who has wandered into the street and tripped on her skirts. He helps her stand, and from that moment they find no peace unless they are together. As their love grows, Tremayne knows he must leave Sabrina. Together she would be an outcast, too.
Vaughan, Vivian