A year after the Civil War's end, battle-scarred surgeon Dru Talbot-presumed long dead by all who loved him-returns home. Through everything he'd clung to the dream of starting life over with the bride he'd married on the very eve he left for war. Yet the truth that awaits him in Magnolia Creek is nothing like his fairy tale. Young widow Sara Collier had risen above her grief for Dru, refusing to mourn her life away. But she'd put her faith and trust in the wrong man and made one wrong choice that changed her future forever. Sara returns to Magnolia Creek an outcast, a fallen woman, the mother of a child born out of wedlock. Soon she must face the man she'd loved so desperately when she was young, innocent, and the world was hers. Can he forgive her? Can he truly still love her? Or her child? A seven-time Romance Writers of America finalist for the RITA Award, Jill Marie Landis now also writes The Tiki Goddess Mysteries (set on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, where she lives with her husband, actor Steve Landis).