Mended by Moonlight (Shenandoah Neighbors)

Description

A grief-stricken young Confederate widow Ella Ruth Owen only wants to hide at home and wait to die. Her parents need her to make a pretty appearance in Yankee social circles so her father can recover his business interests. They pressure her to abandon black mourning clothing and make conciliatory visits with her mother to Yankee woman who are newly arrived in Charlottesville with their carpet-bagger husbands.

Physician and surgeon Alexander Marshall carries deep guilt that he was away at war tending wounded soldiers when his fiancée died of a fever. Lacking a future, it doesn’t matter to him that the army sends him to the hinterlands of Virginia to work at a new hospital.

Ella Ruth’s arguments with her parents bring on debilitating headaches. Momma arranges for her to be seen by a physician at the new hospital—dismissing the fact that it’s a convalescence facility for Union soldiers.

The appearance in his office of a haunted young woman banishes Alex’s lethargy. Her claim of surgical experience shocks and intrigues him. How best can he cure her headaches? Can he figure out a way to use her skills? Will Ella Ruth’s resistance to her growing attraction to the doctor ever soften? That cannot happen until she is Mended by Moonlight.

(Mended by Moonlight is best enjoyed if read after the Owen Family Saga novel, Gone for a Soldier.)