Mary Jane Ellis had known hardship from the earliest days of her life, but she had never tasted true despair until the afternoon she stood before the undertaker's rough pine casket, the last of her husband's meager legacy.

Virginia's mining towns had a way of grinding hope to dust, and now, with William gone and the baby growing inside her, it felt as though the ground had finally opened up beneath her feet. The scent of coal smoke and damp moss clung to her threadbare dresses and even the walls of the narrow clapboard rooms she called home.

Her hands were raw from scrubbing and washing, her nights were restless with worry, and her belly grew heavier with each passing week.

It was during one of those long, hopeless evenings, as the wind rattled the windows and whistled through the cracks, that Mary Jane remembered the flyer she'd seen weeks ago: "Respectable Gentlewomen Wanted – Matrimonial Prospects Out West."