Holly told me, “Almost all of my books begin with a person traveling to a new place. In Spencer, Olive is brave, learning to give her heart, afraid as she is, even to the point of saving their lives. Her education is less of an academic sort, that she received in the city. Olive is stiff and unprepared for life as a mother substitute, yet she feels that she learns more in Spencer than she had in the more sophisticated Philadelphia. Their reactions are not so different from abused children today.

Mary and John are realistically drawn abused and neglected children: Mary becomes cynical and tough John withdraws and is terrified. I am done letting life go by.”įarm life is not easy and Olive finds herself working hard cooking, cleaning, teaching and loving the 5 children she is now responsible for. Despite her lack of experience and being used to Philadelphia life, “Olive felt more alive, more focused than she ever had before in her life…. She begins to mother his 3 children as well. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.What her brother and his wife put their children through “rubbed raw all that she knew to be true…” With great difficulty, Olive rises to the occasion, mothers her niece and nephew with the help of her brother’s neighbor Jacob Butler. Will Olive and Jacob find the strength to fight their battles alone or together? Will love conquer the bitterness of loss and broken dreams? Real danger threatens Olive and Mary and John while Jacob and his own brood battle the day-to-day struggles for survival. Her niece and nephew, Mary and John, have been living with a neighboring farmer, widower Jacob Butler, the father of three young children of his own and a man still in pain from the recent loss of his wife. Accustomed to the sophistication of Philadelphia, Olive arrives in Spencer, Ohio, a rough and tumble world she is not familiar with, facing two traumatized children. She arrives to find the circumstances of her brother’s life deplorable and her long held beliefs of family and tradition, shaken. Spinster librarian, Olive Wilkins, is shocked to learn of her brother’s violent death at a saloon gaming table and her sister-in-law’s subsequent murder, traveling far from her staid life to rescue her niece and nephew, now orphans.

Romancing Olive by Holly Bush