Showing results by author "Jean Hackensmith" in All Categories

Nate Adammson is the last guardian of his family’s 320-acre kingdom, a legacy his father, Lucas, carved from the prairie after escaping the deadly Pennsylvania coal mines forty years ago. But as wheat prices collapse and the "Great Plow-Up" turns the soil to powder, Nate is doubling down on a dying hand—breaking more sod and inviting a disaster that threatens to bury them all. When Micky Kaluza, the sharp-edged daughter of a miner from Lucas’s past, arrives with a tin box of secrets, she brings a bracing truth: the land Nate is killing himself to save is becoming his grave. As the ...

If you liked the poignancy and wholesome nature of “The Promise,” you will LOVE “A Dream In the Wilderness.” Unable to find a teaching position in the flooded job market that is New York City, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Bentley accepts the position of nanny to Caleb Wachsmann’s three children after the farmer’s wife, parents, and infant son die in the Cholera epidemic of 1834. The twist? The job is in Superior, Wisconsin in the Michigan Territory, an unsettled wilderness located on the northwestern tip of Lake Superior. Caleb is not looking for love; his heart will always belong ...

“If you ever need anything, Rebecca, you just let me know and I'll be there." Those were the words 16-year-old Jacob Walker told his best friend before her family moved to Oklahoma. Never did he expect that he would have to live up to that promise 14 years later. It was now 1931, and Rebecca was a widow, left to care for her four children alone. She was also the lone caretaker of a failing 500-acre farm. That was the least of her problems. Oklahoma was about to enter the "The Dust Bowl."

In 1891, tragedy strikes a humble coal-mining family in Pennsylvania when a beloved family member is lost in a devastating accident. Overwhelmed by grief and poverty, they make a daring decision: to leave behind the coal mines and seek a fresh start on the vast plains of the Oklahoma Panhandle. Guided by hope and resilience, they claim 160 acres of land granted by the Homestead Act, determined to forge a new life through farming. As seasons shift—bringing droughts, scorching heat, fierce blizzards, and relentless dust storms—the family’s unwavering spirit is put to the test. Their ...

Rebecca Sutherland fell in love with her best friend, Jacob Walker in “The Promise”. But before Jacob, there was Henry Olsen, a kind, gentle man who was twenty years her senior. She was only fourteen when she met Henry and much too young to even consider him as a mate. Nearly three years later, Rebecca’s father dies of heart disease, and their good friend Henry is the logical one to help Owen’s wife and daughter run the farm. Of course, it would be indecent if he were to simply move in without marrying Rebecca first. What starts out as a marriage of convenience quickly turns into an...

The story of the Wachsmann family continues in “Whispers In The Wilderness”, Book Two in “The Wilderness Saga”. As Wisconsin edges closer to statehood, Caleb and Sarah Wachsmann’s family expands in the heart of the Wisconsin wilderness, yet they are relentlessly pursued by a troubled past. An unyielding foe is intent upon ending Caleb and Sarah’s lives, convinced that they and they alone are responsible for Lucas Roberts’ death. Despite the fact that Caleb nearly lost his life after the encounter with Lucas, the truth holds little weight with this newest adversary. Meanwhile, ...

When the Wachsmann family finds that their lands actually border a massive “cutoff”—a vast, stump-laden tract of land left behind by the lumber companies—they find themselves on the precipice of a devastating natural disaster. A subterranean peat fire has been smoldering for years and begins to surface on their property, threatening to swallow their grazing lands from below. To add insult to injury, the generous wages offered by the docks and shipyard in Superior siphon away their workers, forcing the family to return to a simpler time—a time when they each worked the dairy farm ...

In the rugged Oklahoma Panhandle at the turn of the century, farmer Lucas Adammson leads a double life. By day he cultivates the soil with innovations that push the prairie toward resilience; by night, he writes as The Anonymous Miner, a fearless critic of the railroad and mining titans who siphon wealth from the land and its people. His letters, shaped in response to the Lattimer massacre, spark nationwide resistance and threaten to topple a corrupt order—while drawing a lethal counterstrike from those who profit from oppression. Eli Harrow arrives in Beaver City with a mission to ...

Lucas Adammson’s life in the Oklahoma Panhandle is a daily test of survival and quiet longing for peace. In 1896, a year after losing his wife in childbirth, he shoulders four children and a struggling farm, barely finding the strength to face each new dawn. His mother, Maggie, does what she can to help, but a fragile new order is already fraying when Samantha—a fiery redhead from a neighboring farm—comes into their lives. After filing for divorce, Samantha’s domineering husband tracks her down, and she seeks refuge with the Adammson’s. At the same time, Lucas treads a separate, ...

BOOK TWO in The "Passage" Time Travel Romance Saga. Brittany Cavanaugh, an oceanographer from the year 2001 and the second "rightful owner" of a mysterious Haitian amulet, travels through time, along with her fiancé Ian Buchanan, to the doomed ocean liner, Titanic. Despite their best efforts to convince the captain that the ship will hit an iceberg and sink in only two hours, Brittany and Ian are thrust into the icy waters of the north Atlantic when Titanic goes down. She cries for someone, anyone to save them. The amulet grows warm against Brittany's chest and both her and Ian are picked ...

Amid the turmoil of the Civil War, the women of Wachsmann’s Farms face an unprecedented challenge. With the men drafted under The Enrollment Act of 1863, the spirited Sarah Wachsmann defies her son Seth’s wishes to abandon the fields until their return. Instead, she envisions a bold plan: to build a cheese factory that will produce Cheddar cheese and condensed milk for the soldiers fighting on the front lines. When the crew she hires proves to be dangerous and threatening, Sarah’s dream hangs in the balance. Desperate to protect her home and the other women in her family, she turns to...

In the heart of rural America, Danielle Wachsmann finds her world forever changed when she marries James Buchanan, unaware that she may be carrying Paul Holmgren’s child. As the Wachsmann’s navigate love, loyalty, and the weight of secrets, a wealthy outsider’s offer to invest in the farm sparks suspicion—his true motives entwined with revolutionary advancements in pasteurization that could transform the dairy industry. Their suspicions are put on hold, however, when a devastating outbreak of Bovine Tuberculosis puts everything they’ve worked for at risk. With the future of the ...

In this gripping continuation of the Wachsmann family saga, the stakes are even higher as the farm flourishes into a thriving dairy business, complete with two bustling milk wagons making weekly rounds to Superior, WI and Duluth, MN. Set against the backdrop of the post-Civil War era, only two of the Wachsmann men remain, leaving the resilient women of the family to pick up the slack, determined to honor their loved ones’ legacies and ensure the farm’s success. As the Wachsmann’s thrive, the cities of Superior and Duluth find themselves embroiled in a fierce rivalry over access to a ...

In the rugged landscape of 1840s Wisconsin, a new state emerges, but the promise of a fresh start is overshadowed by personal tragedy. When the Wachsmann family faces an unimaginable loss, young Seth and his wife, Hannah, are thrust into a battle to sustain the family unity. Amidst the turmoil, Hannah gives birth to a son who is afflicted with a mysterious condition, forcing the couple to confront heart-wrenching choices about their child’s future. Can they defy societal expectations and raise him themselves, or will fear and stigma dictate their decision? In A State In The Wilderness, ...

Matt Walker was fifteen when he almost died of dust pneumonia in “The Promise.” Now, ten years later, he is a twenty-five-year-old WWII flying ace with 34 kills, four of them at Pearl Harbor. His high school sweetheart, Julie Sullivan, promised to wait for him when he went off to war, but a single careless night in Papua New Guinea left Matt with a wife and child on the way, breaking Julie’s heart. When Matt returns home after the war, he makes his living in the skies once again, this time as a crop duster. His Piper J-4 Cub Coupe is his pride and joy, second only to his infant son, ...

FINAL BOOK in the "Passage" Time Travel Romance Saga. Darius Calhoun is President of the U.S. in the year 2320. Citizens of earth now live in domed cities. They no longer feel hatred, jealousy, envy or love. They don't have sex either, and haven't for nearly two hundred years. Why? Because it's messy, unsanitary and can transmit disease. Imagine Darius' horror then, when he suddenly finds himself displaced in time at the whim of the goddess Aveena, goddess of love. Only one thing in 14th century Scotland enables Darius to keep his sanity. Her name is Lara Macgregor. Lara is beautiful, ...

In April 1910, the "Iron Age" of the Wachsmann dairy farm is being buried under the wet concrete of progress. Following a tragic autumn that fractured the family, Cole’s uncle, Wyatt, has returned from California to help hold the homestead together—but the land itself seems to be rejecting the new century. With their former pasture now flooded for the new reservoir, eerie "ghost lights" begin to dance over the drowning grasslands, fueling local superstitions that the ghosts of past are rising with the water. In the skies above, a greater omen approaches: Halley’s Comet is nearing its ...

"Shadows of the Past" revisits the Wachsmann family as they stand at the crossroads of tradition and a modern, industrializing world. The dairy farm remains the heart of their Wisconsin community, but a new, aggressive rival—an East Coast “bonanza farm”—threatens to upend their way of life and the local pasteurization market. Into this upheaval strides Deputy U.S. Marshal Collin McCabe, who has been assigned to track a dangerous predator who is terrorizing area women. Alexandra’s history with Collin resurfaces in a way that unsettles the household when Michael—her husband—...

It’s the family vacation of a lifetime. A trip on a genuine wagon train headed west across the Great Plains of Kansas. The brochure promises adventure, realism and romance, but it says nothing about the possibility that your entire caravan of more than forty twenty-first century pioneers could become unwilling participants in a real trek west. A trip destined to take place in the year 1845; a trip that will test your stamina and courage as you cross endless deserts, towering peaks and raging rivers. Add to that a prairie fire and a ghostly caravan of Oregon-bound immigrants who trudge ...

BOOK ONE in The "Passage" Time Travel Romance Saga. Kristie Somers is happy in her life. She has a promising career ahead of her, grandparents who love her, and no time for a man. Or so she thought, until she was dropped in the year 1864 at the close of the Civil War. The handsome Colonel Eric Langston was a man to be hated. Her grandparents told her so. Her family has despised him for generations. He commanded the Union regiment that invaded her ancestral home; he was responsible for Whispering Willows being burned to the ground. Why then, does her heart pound every time he enters a room? ...