Well, after three scenes of La Belle Christiane, I thought we needed a break and my friend Author Laurie Kingery has a new Love Inspired Historical out this month, The Doctor Takes a Wife. AND SHE’S GIVING AWAY A COPY TO SOMEONE WHO LEAVES A COMMENT! (Include your email using dot and at) Here’s Laurie:

DIFFERENT KINDS OF STRENGTH

I write about strong women too, just as Lyn Cote does. The caliber of readers I write for will no longer put up with a wimpy heroine who clutches her handkerchief and cries and waits for a strong man to rescue her out of whatever circumstances she has landed in, either out of her own foolishness, the foolishness of others, or circumstances beyond her control.

In the first book of my Brides of Simpson Creek series, MAIL ORDER COWBOY (Nov.’10, Love Inspired Historicals) Milly Matthews is a strong plucky woman who won’t resign herself to being an old maid simply because the town has no eligible men following the Civil War. She forms a club of likeminded single women to send for marriage-minded bachelors to come and court them, the Spinsters’ Club, and succeeds in making the very first match. Her sister Sarah eyes the project with uneasiness at first, partially because her heart is still mourning for her fiancé Jesse, a Confederate soldier who never returned from the war.

There are many kinds of strength, I believe. Milly possesses the more obvious kind, the kind that thinks of big ideas and sees them through. Milly keeps the ranch going after their father dies, when many women would have sold out and moved to town.

But her sister Sarah, heroine of my mid-January book, THE DOCTOR TAKES A WIFE (Love Inspired Historicals), is a strong woman too. Her strength is more the quiet kind, the kind that loves deeply and believes strongly, and when she is convinced, there is no stopping her. When she first meets Dr. Nolan Walker, the man who has courted her through his letters, she is immediately put off because she finds out he is a Yankee. Yankees were generally hated in Texas and the rest of the defeated South for a long time after the Civil War, and since Sarah has lost her first love in that war, how could she forgive a man who withheld the fact in his letters that he is one of that hated breed?

Strong women are also fair women. Nolan realizes the doctor-less town needs him and stays. Slowly and surely, Sarah’s sense of fairness shows her Nolan’s true worth, and friendship turns to love between the two—though Sarah still has reservations about Nolan because he doesn’t share her strong faith. She shows Nolan there is a better way than his doubt and cynicism.

It will take a deadly epidemic to bring out Sarah’s real, underlying strength, and she battles right alongside Nolan. A life-threatening crisis threatens to put a premature end to their love, but Sarah’s strong, godly influence helps Nolan win the battle.

But Sarah and Nolan still can’t enjoy the peace they’ve earned. A figure from Sarah’s past returns. Sarah and Nolan must be strong in ways they never imagined to live happily ever after.

I hope you will enjoy THE DOCTOR TAKES A WIFE as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Blessings, Laurie Kingery

To learn more about Laurie and her books: