Sixteen Brides by Stephanie Grace Whitson

This story takes place in Nebraska in 1871. A group of widowed ladies are recruited in St. Louis by a wily entrepreneur with the lure of claiming their own homesteads in Nebraska. Unbeknownst to them, he has already arranged with the bachelors in the small settlement in Nebraska where he is taking them to choose their brides when they arrive. Of course this does not set well with all of the ladies when they discover the scheme. A small group of them take matters into their own hands and file their own claims and work together to make their dream happen. Predictably, most of these ladies had made a romantic connection with a local bachelor before the end of the story. The story took some unexpected and sometimes slightly implausible turns, and it was fairly predictable but for all of that it was thoroughly enjoyable. I did think the author could have developed her action a little more, i.e., making the resolution of the conflict a little less easily and quickly solved. Bethany House gave me a copy of this book for review and once again I am grateful to them for introducing me to an author I hadn’t discovered up until now.