Shattered Dreams

Laura Jane O'Leary's future in Wilder's Landing couldn't be brighter. She has a teaching Job she loves, and she's about to marry a man she adores, but her dreams are shattered when she's brutally assaulted. As a result, her fiance breaks off their engagement, and she loses her teaching Job. To further complicate matters, Laura Jane discovers that she's carrying her assailant's child. Heart broken and ashamed, Laura Jane faces a wretched future. Ezra Gray's dreams are shattered when his beloved wife dies giving birth to a stillborn child, leaving him to raise their two children alone. He blames himself for her death and he vows never to put another woman in harm's way. Ezra moves to Magnolia Bend, Alabama and it isn't long before he realizes it's impossible to work his farm and care for the children. What Ezra needs is a wife, not in the real sense, but a woman who would care for his children in exchange for a home and security, but how to find such a woman? Perhaps it was God's intervention that brought Ezra Gray to purchase a farm a scant thirty miles from Wilder's Landing, and maybe it was His hand which guided Ezra to take his family to the small Methodist church where the Reverend Matthew McNally preached two Sundays each month. Whether it was God's hand or simply the hand of fate, the two seemingly unimportant incidents would lead Laura Jane O'Leary and Ezra Gray to build a new life from those . . . SHATTERED DREAMS.