DESCRIPTION:

Harriet Goodspell is leading her two friends in prayer before supper when a man dressed in an orange clown suit stumbles into their campsite. He sports several days beard growth and looks as surprised to see them as they him.

Harriet plans to bring religion to the miners of Contention City in Arizona Territory. Back in St. Joseph, Missouri, where her father is a preacher, she read a newspaper accounting of the Godless western town, a town with no church and few women. Any decent woman fled the town leaving home and husband behind. Harriet (Hetty) determines that she will be the one to turn Contention City into a peaceful, Godfearing, civilized city.

Joshua Blaines Crandal is knocked on the head and kicked off of Jim Clamerty’s Circus and Medicine Show wagon and left to fend for himself in the middle of nowhere with Clamerty taking off with all Josh’s money, clothes, horse and saddle. Josh aims to settle the score, but wanders in the desert for several days before he stumbles into Miss Hetty’s campsite
.
Harriet’s wagon has a broken wheel and fortunately the incident occurs by a small green spot in the Arizona wasteland. When Josh straggles in, she believes God has sent him to repair the wagon’s wheel. At first glance, he appears to be a poor excuse for a man.

Josh finds Hetty to be an uppity, prim and prissy woman, but she is kind, feeding him when he knows the women’s supplies are low. He does his best to repair the wheel, but at first hasn’t the faintest idea how to go about it. He had been a banker in his father’s bank back in Savannah before he took off and let his wanderlust lead him west.

Harriet’s companions are Becky, whom Harriet had saved from Madam Fletcher’s Bawdy House, and Marilee, a plain but cheerful woman who left her Illinois home and took her belongings with her by wheelbarrow to St. Joseph, Missouri.

Josh fixes the wheel using ingenuity he had not know he possesses, but before they are ready to set out again, a cavalry troop arrives, led by a handsome lieutenant. Just as Josh discovers there is more to Hetty than religion and primness, this Adonis appears. What chance does a man like Josh stand next to someone as attractive and nice as the lieutenant?

REVIEWS:

"Great plot! Great mystery questions! The story has a few funny parts that make one giggle, and the characters seem so real. The language is so authentic. The storyline is unique and is very well written. The pictures of the pioneer days stay in the reader's mind and don't want to let go until the end. A woman preacher, living in the days when men were preachers, not the women. The women obeyed whatever the men-folk of the family said. But not this woman! Will the love of the woman over-rule the love of justice? Wonderful story." Reviewed by Wanda Maynard of Simegen.com, 5 STARS

"A fun read for the romance reader, a tale that offers something better than the usual formula plot, a story you will enjoy because you'll enjoy meeting the characters whose personalities are varied and well drawn. Recommended for a pleasant change from the norm. Enjoy." Reviewed by Anne K. Edwards of ElectronicBookReviews

"TRAIL TO BLISS is a story of two people discovering real love as they travel across the harshly beautiful Arizona Territory. This sweet, gentle romance will make you taste the dust of a desert trail as well as the tenderness of Josh Crandal's kisses. It'll drench you with the kind of downpours that flood a dry riverbed in a heartbeat and show you truly what happens when you run into hungry Indians. In short TRAIL TO BLISS will take you back in time with an authenticity that doesn't once falter in description, dialogue, or the hand-in-hand growth of love and respect between two people of the time. I highly recommend TRAIL TO BLISS by Jeannine D. Van Eperen to anyone who likes their westerns real and their romances sweet. A delightful read!" Reviewed by Barbara Raffin, author of THE INDENTURED HEART and WOLFSONG, both available from Awe-Struck eBooks