The Grass Widow

Aidan Blackstone has nothing. A thousand miles from home, sent to the frontier by a family that doesn't want her back, her only hope for survival is distant relatives who say they'll take her in. As all familiar civilization fades into the distance, she is nineteen, unmarried and pregnant, and has no reason to think that the year 1876 won't be her last.

But she's not met at the Washburn, Kansas, train station by the Bodett family. Only the daughter, Jocelyn, is there to greet her. Aidan finds herself bound for the Bodett farm, where influenza has wiped out the rest of the family, leaving young Joss in perilous financial straits and their only source of food and shelter at risk.

Joss, in her brother's clothes and severely lacking in social graces, has no time to mollycoddle a pampered, pregnant New England lady. It's work or starve, literally. There are no servants, no laborers--just a failing farm, impending winter and the two of them to face it together.

The Grass Widow showcases the ingenuity, determination and courage of women's frontier spirits in a passionate, sensuous love story. Originally published in 1996, Nanci Little's wonderfully detailed and researched novel picks up with the generation of women where Patience and Sarah left off.