Timber; Fire in the Pines — A.L. Sanderson

Sarah Stewart, betrayed, rejected and penniless, strikes out for Minnesota's timber country, determined to find and reckon with the father who abandoned her mother before Sarah was born . The first day, she runs headlong into Thor Nilsson- who immediately decides she doesn't belong there. Undaunted and determined to continue her search, she discovers that the only work available is in the lumber camps-but not for a woman. Disguised as a boy, she hires on as a cook's helper, ending up in the camp where Thor is foreman. Thor is hell-bent on getting what he needs from the timber- enough money to return to Sweden as a rich man and get revenge upon the girl who rejected him for a boy who would inherit land. Fooled by Sarah's disguise, he is bewildered by what he feels for this -boy.- After a summer in camp, the sexual tension is unbearable. She sheds her disguise and hires on as an accountant in the lumber mill in town. Forces outside of themselves-"more powerful even than their own stubborn denial"conspire to keep them apart. But in the end, the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894 is the force that decides their fate.