Healdton, Oklahoma – 1917

The Magnolia Oil Company fired Doctor Addison Carter when they saw their newly hired doctor on their premises. Hired through the mail, they thought Addison was a man’s name. They would not hire a woman, no matter how fine her qualifications. While waiting for a train out of town, Addison decides she will become an army nurse, sure the army would take her with the European war effort still going on, rather than return home to live with her father and brother's superior attitude. They always believed Addison wasted her time becoming a doctor. No man's going to let a woman doctor take care of him. But her departure is delayed when a chance encounter leads to setting wealthy farmer Tucker Anderson’s broken leg and stitching up his cut hand.

Tucker had fallen off his barn’s roof and was lucky to be alive. Neither Tilly nor Clara, his cousins, wants to spend six weeks at the Evening Star Ranch caring for cantankerous Tucker. Instead, they hire Addison, who quickly accepts the triple your normal wages offer. Tucker is an outdoors person who hates being cooped up inside and equally hates professional working women. A woman’s place is under her husband’s thumb. After living with her father and brother, men of the same ilk as Tucker, Addison knows how to handle a recalcitrant man. It also soon becomes clear that the town of Healdton needs Addison. The nearest doctor is over twenty miles away, and in an emergency, it is just too far to travel.

This historical romance set in a not-so-long-ago era will enlighten you to the barriers our grandmas and great-grandmas breached. We reap the benefits they earned every single day. This component of the story alone is reason to read EVENING STAR. Add to that a story with engaging characters that seem part and parcel of the time, interesting, often humorous situations, and a bumpy romance…well, you have a great read. Addison and Tucker’s romance will be difficult, and at one point seems nigh on impossible. Carolyn Brown has a fast, easy prose style that lets you absorb the story with no distractions -- and she will keep you reading until the very last page.

Robin Lee