Love and Cherish by Dorothy Garlock

Love and Cherish on January 1, 1980
Genres: Fiction/Romance/Western Historical
Pages: 352
Goodreads

17 years old and terribly alone, Cherish Riley runs into the Kentucky wilderness from the low-down family that dared to sell her. She meets a man named Sloan Carroll, who proposes to her, but he finds that it will take a little more to win her heart.

Love and Cherish by Dorothy Garlock is a frontier historical romance set in the rugged backwoods of 1779 Kentucky. Cherish Riley is a young woman running for her life when a back woodsman named Sloan Carroll rescues her. Much of the story is about the development of their relationship as they travel through dangerous woods to get to safety and his homestead. 

I enjoyed this book. I haven’t read a western historical romance in a few years and I found this tale engaging. I cannot even remember how I stumbled across it, but I’m glad I did. Cherish is a sweet resilient soul, who must push herself past her own physical limits to survive. She is young and very naive, but intriguing as a character. I enjoyed the fact that her outward beauty is devastating to see and that she is unaware of it. The hero Sloane Carroll is a tough handsome man with a mysterious past. He needs a woman to care for his deceased brother’s infant and so he proposes a marriage of convenience. Cherish agrees to assist him but not to marry him and this decision has far reaching implications. Garlock introduces a villain about half way through the book who is the perfect femme fatale that I loved to hate.

There are a number of steamy moments throughout the book. I felt transported back to a dangerous time in American history. I’m looking forward to reading more by this author.