The Loyal Heart by Shelley Shepard Gray

The Loyal Heart (Zondervan, July 2016)

Robert came to Galveston to fulfill his promise to a dying man and look after his widow. He didn’t expect to find love in the unlikeliest of places.

Robert Truax, former Second Lieutenant and Confederate officer in the Civil War, made a promise to his comrade Phillip Markham. If anything happened to Phillip, Robert would look after his beloved wife, Miranda. She was his life, his world, his everything.

After the war, Robert is left to pick up the pieces and fulfill his pact. When he arrives at Miranda’s home in Galveston, Texas, things are worse than he imagined. Phillip’s name has been dragged through the mud, everyone in town believes him to be a traitor, and his widow is treated as an outcast. Even more disturbing is her emotional well-being. Miranda seems hopeless, lost, and so very alone.

Robert had thought his duty would be simple. He would help Miranda as quickly as possible in order to honor a promise. But the moment Robert laid eyes on her, his plans changed. He’s mesmerized by her beauty and yearns to help her in any way he can.

He makes it his duty to protect Miranda, turn her reputation around, and to find some way to help her smile again. But it doesn’t prove to be an easy task—Robert knows something about Phillip that could shake Miranda to the core and alter her view of the man she thought she knew so well.

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{MORE ABOUT SHELLEY SHEPARD GRAY}

Shelley Shepard Gray is a “New York Times” and “USA Today” bestselling author, a finalist for the American Christian Fiction Writers prestigious Carol Award, and a two-time HOLT Medallion winner. She lives in southern Ohio, where she writes full-time, bakes too much, and can often be found walking her dachshunds on her town’s bike trail.

Find out more about Shelley athttp://www.shelleyshepardgray.com.

My Take:  This book opens when a group of Southern soldiers are being held in a Northern prisoner of war camp during the Civil War.  The men have grown quite close and have promised to keep in touch and look out for each other after the war. One man asks the other men to watch out for his wife if anything happens to him.  They agree.  He then dies in the camp.  Robert is asked to check on the wife her name is Miranda.  Miranda's in-laws are trying to take the house that she inherited from her husband away from her.  In order to make ends meet she has turned the mansion into a boarding house.  The town has labeled her husband as a traitor.  With the help of her loyal servants, the local sheriff and a couple of other former soldiers, They are able to take care of all these problems and Robert is able to fall in love with Miranda.  There are other things that happen with other characters that make this book suspenseful and a love story also.  Miss Gray never seems to disappoint.  

I received a review copy from Litfuse in exchange for my honest opinion.