With the opening of the Alaska Highway to civilian traffic in 1947, Clermont, an Amy Air Corps veteran, and his sweetheart, Gwynne, came to the Copper River Basin, a vast wilderness where only a small community of individuals lived and depended upon each other. This is the true story of a time and place that are nearly forgotten, and some of the real characters who made things happen in post World War II Alaska. There were the old timers, like the trapper, Ben Pinks, who did everything in his power to keep the fiercely independent Chechakos, Cler and Gwynne, from starving or freezing to death...

The second book in The Art of Being Charlee series. Charlee returns to the remote town of Snowflake, Montana, to finish out her year of teaching school, where the spring thaw is exposing more than mud on the prairie. She is drawn deeper into secrets of the illegal trafficking of Native American artifacts going on in the area, and finds herself in danger more than she realizes. She keeps most of her adventures from Ian, who she thinks worries too much, while she's trying to figure things out. Help comes from surprising sources, and she in turn is in the right place to help someone she'd never...

The irrepressible Charlee runs off to Las Vegas to marry the handsome Scottish horse breeder, Ian. They return to Ian's Appaloosa ranch in the forested mountains near Pineville, Montana, and begin life together, but it's not the uninterrupted bliss Charlee had imagined. As Charlee struggles to integrate herself into Ian's world, things get complicated when she encounters the ghost of Ian's father. He may be only her imagination, but Daniel raises questions about the death of Ian's first wife when he discloses family secrets. When Charlee discovers a hidden box of counterfeit money, she's...