Doreen Milstead

The year was 1875, and Wilhelmina Rose felt as if she were living with one foot in a musty parlor and the other in a Jules Verne novel. Her world of doilies, etiquette, and endless embroidery circles was smothering, squeezing the air from her dreams like corset stays. Wilhelmina knew the only way out of Connecticut society's velvet trap was a leap bold enough to shock even herself. So, when she spied the advertisement in the back of Godey's Lady's Book- "Gentleman Rancher in Need of Companionship, Arizona Territory.
Respectable. Owns Land. Letters Welcome"-she tore out the page and hid it under her pillow. Wilhelmina spent weeks in a state of nervous anticipation, her mind a riot of imagined outcomes. She rehearsed every possible line, every subtle turn of phrase, until her thoughts spun like the gears in those intricate clocks she coveted from the marketplace.