The Golden Woman

Joan Stanmore returns from riding to find her aunt, Mercy Lascelles, consulting a crystal despite a doctor's warning. Independent and affectionate, Joan has chosen to share her aunt's home out of family loyalty. Mercy's harsh manner and troubled past make that loyalty difficult. This Western novel places Joan's personal worries against a Montana setting, with fortune telling, gold earnings and the pressures of camp life entering her story.

The contrast between Joan's gentle nature and her need to defend her wishes becomes especially clear when an unwelcome visitor talks of marriage as though she has already agreed. His boasts about money turn a social call into an alarming encounter. Ridgwell Cullum builds tension through sharply opposed temperaments, forceful dialogue and uncomfortable claims on another person's future. Readers interested in frontier fiction can find a story concerned as much with private obligations and independence as with its Western surroundings.