Timber; Fire in the Pines

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.