Modern girls seemed always in a hurry. Now the one who slammed into Jacob Hessman on the street near St. Paul’s Union Depot has boarded his train. He knows her type: flapper-chic in her bobbed hair and stylish dress, so different from the sweet, country-bred kind of girl who once filled his heart.Gwendolyn Smith’s window to escape Hugh Phelps is closing fast. Performing in speak-easies and … and underground clubs has left her mistrustful of most men, but the big fellow she plows into on her flight to the station seems safe enough to attach herself to for short term protection.
Friendship unfolds, but Gwen hides behind lies, wishing she might deserve such a God-fearing man as Jacob, and Jacob’s pursuit of a perfect wife conflicts with his mounting concern for Gwen. Meanwhile, Hugh is catching up. For Jacob and Gwen, trapped in their pasts and misconceptions, the time for truth and love is running out.
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Modernity smacks headlong into traditional when a singer from the speakeasies escapes that smoky underground world and collides with an old-fashioned man with staunch ideas of proper and improper behavior. With bobbed hair, kohled eyes, and a drop-waist dress that reveals her knees, Gwen Smith epitomizes Jacob Hessman’s idea of “improper.”
But Jacob has a soft heart, and Gwen has a past that’s closing in on her. While the battle rages between her and the man who claims she “owes” him, Jacob realizes he’s falling in love with her. He can untangle her from her past, but can he convince her that she is “good enough” for him?
I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve read a full series at all, much less one book after the other. I just ordered the third in Naomi Musch’s Echoes of the Heart series because the first two held me completely enthralled.
Wow. This is the second book in the series. I loved the first, “The Deepest Sigh,” and this one might even be better. The wonderfully rounded characters are both endearing and flawed. The setting is post-WWI when so many changes were happening both socially and industrially. The hero is charmingly old-school, and the heroine is snappily modern. The tension between them is believable and understandable. I didn’t want to put it down!
This book, as well as “The Deepest Sigh,” was originally published by Desert Breeze Publishing which has since gone out of business. Author Musch is putting the books back in production independently and is releasing book three, “The Brightest Hope,” on August 1, 2019. I never really thought I liked books written in this era, but she’s proved me wrong. I’ll be first in line to get my copy!
This story takes you back to the 1920’s during prohibition when speakeasies were the way to get your liquor. Jess befriends Gwen and helps her get a job in a department store. Gwen growing up on the street attached herself to one Hugh Phelps who treats her like his daughter, but abuses her financially, and sometimes physically. She escapes and meets up with Jess. This story is very action-packed and mistrust is the theme of the plot. Learning to love and acting in love are so difficult, but the choices made are exactly that. I love how the relationship was initially built, and how Jess and Gwen made hard choices, but stuck by them to the end. This is not my favorite time era, but the story is well written.
What I really love about this novel, well aside from the fact that the author captures the post WWI era perfectly, is that her characters are multidimensional. It’s not the often reworked scenario where the flapper has a heart of gold, but that Gwendolyn Smith has a deep interior life.
The saddest thing was Gwen’s early life. She was abandoned by her mother, befriended by Hugh Phelps, an older man who purported to be father-like, but used her incredible singing ability to make a lot of money for himself. He controlled and intimidated her, holding her emotionally and financially captive, and even physically abused her on occasion.
Jacob Hessman doesn’t have a way with women. From what I gathered in backstory, he had his heart and his pride smashed to smithereens in the previous novel in the series. I started with this novel because I like the Roaring Twenties era so much. He completely misreads Gwen when she actually physically runs into him at the St. Paul train station as she frantically tries to find a train she can board to run away from Phelps. She follows Jacob onto a train and to a small town where he helps her partially out of Christian kindness and partially out of an intense instant attraction.
This novel is well worth the read. I recommend it to anyone who loves the 1920s era in American history as much as I do.