Brenda Minton
Two tales of holiday homecoming.
Spend the holidays with family
in these two Western novellas!
Home is where the heart is in His Christmas Family when Laurel Adams comes home and discovers a foster kid and a seriously charming horse trainer living on her grandmother’s ranch. And in A Merry Wyoming Christmas, single mom Leann Bowden is starting over when she and her daughter are rescued from a snowstorm. Might the dashing cowboy be the Christmas gift they’re dreaming of?
Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
—Isaiah 43:19
Thank you for joining me in Hope, Oklahoma, for the Christmas season! Although it is a fictional town, I believe Hope is a symbol of all that is right in our world. A community where people come together, helping their neighbors and showing love to those in need.
This holiday season, take a little bit of Hope with you! Reach out to those around you and be a light that shines! Wishing you all the best and a Merry Christmas!
With Love!
Brenda Minton
This book is dedicated to my children.
I pray you always follow your dreams,
are always willing to accept a challenge,
try a new path and trust that God has a plan.
The small town of Hope, Oklahoma, happened to be everything Laurel Adams didn’t want for Christmas. She didn’t want twinkling lights, country cafés decorated with green and-silver garland or people who stood on the street corner and offered a cheery greeting as she drove past. She wanted big-city anonymity and her Chicago apartment, with its view of Lake Michigan. Instead she found herself in a town she had visited only twice in over twenty years.
When she was nine years old, she and her mother had moved from Hope to Chicago. It had been their fresh start, her mom had said. It was their adventure. Really, it had been their escape.
Back then, the town of Hope hadn’t been a friendly haven to a single mother who worked as a waitress and did her best to survive. Laurel’s grandmother assured her it had changed. As Laurel drove into town, it was easy to see the cosmetic differences. But the surface wasn’t what mattered to a girl who had been hurt by names and dirty looks.
You could hang twinkling lights on it, put on a fresh coat of paint and plant flowers. Those things didn’t change the heart of a town. You could put a fancy facade on the front of a building, but if the foundation was crumbling, it didn’t matter a bit.
She turned on a side road that led along the lake and up into the hills on the northern edge of town. Her grandmother’s old Victorian sat on