This HaBO is from Andrea, who is hoping to find this romance. Warnings below for faking a child’s death:
I know I read the book in late 1990s to mid-2000s. Frontier or Western setting.
Man enters an inn and ends up marrying a young woman (who knows how to live in mountain area) by spending night in bed with a board between them (jumping the board). The woman is with a scout or guide. They get married and she guides or goes with them, but he leaves her at another inn and plans to return later. Innkeeper woman does not give the heroine her husband’s note that he will return and makes her work for her keep.
The heroine finds out she’s pregnant and goes into labor from a fall off a wagon while unloading it. She’s told her baby died. She leaves. Man comes back and is told her and the baby died. However, the people who had taken the child, a son, bring him back. Innkeeper woman tells the hero his wife died and she couldn’t keep baby, so she gave him away.
He discovers wife is still alive and goes to get her from (possibly) England. On the way home (maybe Colorado), she gets amnesia from being struck in the head on a ship. He takes her home to meet son.
At some point, someone tries to capture her and the son. She avoids being caught by carrying her son on her back in a icy river. Husband tracks them down and finds them safe in a cave with a Native American. They reconcile as she has her memory back.
This sounds wild and I have no clue how geographically this all works.
Brilliantly, beautifully bananapants. Absolutely following
@Andrea read it in late 90’s early 2000′, but that cracktastic plot had to have been written in the 80’s.
Now that’s what I call old skool!
Lawzy, this sounds batsh*t krazy. Following.
So familiar… I was having flashbacks reading this description. I didn’t read very many Westernesque HRs then, but – Jo Goodman? One of the sisters-series (Dennehy?) books? That’s all I got.
Whoa. This definitely calls for popcorn…
Wow. I think Joan Johnston wrote some banana pants westerns but I don’t recognize this plot.
I agree with @DonnaMarie thinking this sounds super 80s wildness.
These stories always annoy me to no end because the hero and heroine were hardly ever on the page together (like some weird Odysseus and Penelope BS); one thing that nopes me out of stories now is if the main characters are barely around each other, and I’m glad they seem to be few and far between nowadays.
Also why did they always have the EVIL WOMAN side character; just reading the description here of the “innkeeper woman” has my blood boiling for retribution…
I have a vague memory of this possibly being a Rebecca Brandewyne or a Shirlee Busbee. However, I read so many historical western bodice-rippers with crazy-sauce plots from 1976 until about 1990, I couldn’t say for sure. I just did a quick Amazon scroll through their backlists, but nothing rang any bells—but many of their books are basically unblurbed (just an old paperback copy being sold) that I could be missing something obvious.
I agree with @spinsterrevival about the plots of 1980s books. I started reading romance in the mid-1990s with Johanna Lindsey. But I kept hearing about how great Rosemary Rogers and the Steve and Ginny series was so I picked up the first book. Didn’t like it as much but thought I’d try the next one since they were so popular and held up as the height of romance. It was worse. Not only did the MCs spend hardly any time together but they spent an awful lot of sexy times with other people. Yet they supposedly were the love of each other’s lives? I started book 3 but stopped a couple of chapters in because it was more of the same. And I won’t even go into the demeaning things that Ginny had to endure. I will say the other thing I still don’t like in my romance novels is the same couple over several books because usually they have to keep splitting up for some reason to justify the next book and I’m not interested (there are exceptions obviously).
Gosh, that innkeeper sure likes to tell lies about people dying!
@Betsydub: Pretty sure it’s not Jo Goodman. I’ve read most of her backlist, and this is way too OTT for her.
Not to hijack the thread, but anyone know what’s up with her? It’s been 4 years since she published anything, and that was a self-pubbed contemporary. I miss her annual May release.
Bananapants is my new favorite word!!! Gotta say there are soooo many terrific books out there I want to read and this definitely isn’t on the list.
@Sandra I’ve been wondering the same, and there’s been no life update on her website since 2020. I know that she had had some serious medical problems prior to that.
Ok, I read this. Likely, secretly, in the corner of the library without having the mortification of checking it out with our 80 year old librarian. Let me google a bit.
That sounds kind of familiar. Now, I have to find out.
It could have been a 1980s novel. I remember also that the heroine might have been Pennsylvanian Dutch. She was blonde with an accident. The innkeeper tells her that her husband indentured her. He goes off to complete his mission and I think he gets imprisoned. She is told her daughter died, but she really had a son.
Now I want to read this!!!