In 1875, Mary Lou Tompkins sat with her spine straight as a fence post and her gloved hands at rest in her lap, gazing out a smudged train window at the endless ochre and gold of the desert unfurling past. She was not a woman given to dreamy silences, yet as the iron wheels beat their steady rhythm, she found herself picturing the face of Tom McCaffrey, the Arizona rancher she'd never met except in words.

She'd read his letters so many times, she could recite paragraphs from memory: The way he described the mesquite and wildflowers, the taste of black coffee at sunrise, the loneliness that settled in his bones like dust.

Born and raised among the moss and magnolias of Mississippi, Mary Lou had never even seen the West until she boarded this train, not three weeks ago, and set her sights on a life molded from a stranger's penmanship.