The Colonel's Daughter by Merline Lovelace

He finds Julia a job as a laundress for the camp-a demeaning step down for a woman once known as the Belle of New Orleans. Seeing him, Julia faints, since she believed that he was dead.Īfter they clarify their stories, each shocked to discover that neither has betrayed or used the other, the honorable Andrew wants to help Julia while she waits for news of Phillip, though she is fairly clear that she wants nothing to do with him. There, she runs into a familiar man-Andrew, who is now a major and second-in-command of the fort. On the way, she and her young daughter run into wagon trouble and are stranded in Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory. Penniless, Julia sets out for Wyoming to try to find Phillip. The novel opens in 1867, seven years after Julia’s marriage to Andrew.

However, Phillip turns out to be a degenerate gambler and soon leaves the family to head west to seek his fortune in the Montana goldfields. Julia quickly marries Phillip Bonneaux, with whom she has a daughter, Suzanne.

During his imprisonment, Andrew is tortured eventually, he is released just in time to fight at the Battle of Andersonville. In the meantime, Andrew assumes that Julia betrayed him to her uncle, and bitterly regrets the marriage, not knowing about the annulment. While Julia nurses her broken heart, the uncle has the marriage annulled and convinces her that Andrew was just using her for his spy work. As soon as he returns, Julia’s Confederacy-aligned uncle shoots him, telling Julia that Andrew is dead, though, in reality, Andrew is sent to a prisoner of war camp. However, while he is away, his cover is blown. Several days after the wedding, Andrew leaves New Orleans to report the results of his spy work, fully intending to return for Julia soon. After a whirlwind courtship, they marry in secret. At the outbreak of the Civil War, while Union spy Andrew Garrett is working undercover in that city, he and Julia meet and fall in love. Southern belle Julia Robichaud grows up in a wealthy family in New Orleans. The novel tells the story through flashbacks, but this summary will instead describe events chronologically. Against the backdrop of raids against Native Americans around the Wyoming Territory, a headstrong mother and her young daughter try to find safe harbor-all the while negotiating their relationships with a soldier who never thought he would see the love of his life again. Set a few years after the end of the Civil War, romance novelist Merline Lovelace’s The Horse Soldier (2000), the first of her Garretts of Wyoming series, revolves around a couple getting a second chance at love after their rushed early marriage is scuttled for a variety of external reasons.

The Colonel's Daughter by Merline Lovelace