Sweet Exile by Alison McLeay
17-year-old Kate Summerbee has never lived anywhere but aboard a stern-wheeler with her eccentric father, Ben, on the Mississippi river in New Orleans. During the Civil War, she stumbles upon an Englishman, Matthew Oliver, who is desperate to bring a few crates of unknown contents to England. When Kate and Matthew were caught being together, Ben forces Matthew to take Kate as his wife, with the drunken pastor conducting the wedding ceremony. However, Ben suffers a gunshot wound and Matthew escapes successfully to England while promising Kate that he would write to her.
Ben dies and Kate has nowhere else to go to. Finally, she decides to find Matthew in England. When she arrived there, she discovered some shocking news about Matthew and ended up staying with his parents at Hawk’s Dyke, Matthew’s father’s house. More unexpected events occured during her stay there, among them is the death of Matthew’s beloved mother. Thus, believing to be the cause of her death, Kate quietly leaves Hawk’s Dyke where she calls home.
This romantic novel tells of the inspiring story of an independent, strong-willed young woman who is loved deeply by two men, Matthew and his father, Adam Gaunt. And as the book’s back cover describes: “But only Kate, impulsive, generous and all too human when it comes to matters of the heart, can determine the future of her love…and the home where she can finally belong.”
I read this book in 2004.
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