Even Teachers Need Learn How to Love

Rachel English has traveled to Springwater to take a post as the frontier town’s first teacher. Although the ramshackle schoolhouse – and her half-wild pupils – are not what she has envisioned, Rachel spiritedly makes the best of her new surroundings. But when she takes a stand against the scandalous saloon across the road from the school, she is more than surprised by her own powerful attraction to the bar’s part-owner, handsome widower Trey Hargreaves.

The father of a beautiful part-Lakota Sioux girl, Trey appears to be everything that Rachel, with her proper Eastern upbringing, should avoid. When Rachel’s fiancé died during the Civil war, she turned her passions to teaching, and closed a door in her heart. Now Trey, with his troubled past, is the only man who can soothe her hidden sorrow, and give Rachel a chance to embrace the love of a lifetime.

I really enjoyed Rachel by Linda Lael Miller. It’s the second book in the Springwater Seasons series and you get to see the little stagecoach start to slowly start to grow into a proper town. Each of the books feature a different woman finding love in the heart of the tiny western town (more of a settlement really) in the Montana Territory a few years after the Civil War. This is the story of Evangeline’s (from the first book called, aptly enough: Springwater, which is set 4 years before this one) school teacher friend Rachel English.

This is only the second book I’ve read by Ms. Miller but what I find most intriguing about her heroines, (besides the fact that they are so well-written!) is that all of them are stubborn, strong-willed women that have seen and endured many hardships. None of them are afraid to get their hands dirty but I guess you had to be pretty tough back then, especially if you were a woman.

The only problem I had with this book is that it’s just too short! Actually the next couple of books in the series are all incredibly short (unless you get Springwater Seasons which is all of the "name" books put together into one novel) but they are still just as rich in detail. It feels good to visit Springwater again!

Springwater Seasons
Springwater (1998)
Jessica (1999)
Miranda (1999)
Rachel (1999)
Savannah (1999)
A Springwater Christmas (1999)
Springwater Wedding (2001)

Here is the song Lorena that Trey and Rachel dance to.