Widow's Joy — Terri Grace

Charlotte Beads had just lost a baby when her beloved husband John was sent to war â€" a war from which he never returned. Unlike her friends, Susan and Abigail, she is left childless and questioning her place in the world, so she picks up an old dream and renews her studies to become a schoolteacher. She is ready to find work when she's called out to Spokane to help Susan through a difficult time. Figuring she can find work as a teacher just as easily in Spokane as in Charleston, she heads west with no thought of going home again. The journey is a difficult one, but along the way she meets three people who will change her life: Madeleine Ellis, who immediately becomes Charlotte's guardian angel; a drunken Union soldier, who causes her nothing but trouble; and a friendly but painfully shy shopkeeper by the name of Connor Hayes….