Wolf Creek Series

The Wolf Creek series consists of five historical romance novels written by Arkansas novelist Penny Richards and published from 2013 to 2016 by Harlequin Books as part of its Love Inspired line of Christian romance novels. Wolf Creek was the original name for the community of Delight (Pike County), and Richards employs the older name, which had already fallen out of use by October 1885 (when the series opens), to fictionalize the setting slightly. Other locations referenced include Pisgah (Pike County), Antoine (Pike County), Gurdon (Clark County), Murfreesboro (Pike County), and the Little Missouri River.

The first book, Wolf Creek Wedding, opens with recently widowed Abby Carter, along with baby daughter Laura and six-year-old son Ben, moving into the household and employ of “wealthy gentleman farmer” Caleb Gentry, whose wife, Emily, has just died giving birth to daughter Betsy. Dr. Rachel Stone, the local physician, has recruited Abby to serve as wet nurse for Betsy, and Caleb offers extra for her to live there and conduct household chores. To stem the gossip that soon starts to surround their arrangement, Caleb offers to marry Abby, settling her debts and making arrangements for the proper education of her children. After marrying, both he and Abby do end up falling in love with each other but are afraid to admit it, with their respective spouses so recently departed.

Local gossip Sarah VanSickle attempts to stir up enmity by revealing that Caleb, to whom Abby had entrusted the sale of her land, sold the land to himself to use for gravel mining. Later, Ben falls down a gully and breaks his leg while out checking on their animal traps. Caleb rescues him, but the guilt leads him to think that the best course of action would be to separate from Abby. He asks her to leave while he is on a business trip, but when he returns as a revival at Wolf Creek Church is going on, he decides that “with Abby and God on his side, there was hope that he could be a better man.” When he returns home, Abby is still there, and they finally confess their love for each other. The last chapter ends one year later, with Abby, as Christmas is nearing, giving birth to their son Elijah David Gentry.

Wolf Creek Homecoming opens with a brief prologue set in 1877 in St. Louis, Missouri, where Rachel Stone, studying to be a doctor, runs into Gabe Gentry, the prodigal brother of Caleb. The narrative then returns to Wolf Creek, 1886, with Rachel coming back to the home she shares with her father Edward and son Daniel (Danny). Local merchant Simon Teasdale comes to Rachel’s house to deliver Gabe Gentry, whom he found robbed, beaten, and left in the snow. She treats his injuries but recalls with shame their three weeks together in St. Louis, which he ended by leaving on a paddleboat bound for New Orleans—and leaving her pregnant. With her father’s help, she managed to complete medical school after having the baby and then returned home, where she “brazened out the whispers and cold shoulders” before slowly gaining acceptance from the community.

Gabe had returned home to try to repair the relationship with his brother, realizing that “his life had first begun to unravel” when he left Wolf Creek. After healing sufficiently, he moves into the local boardinghouse. In mid-March, Bart and Mary Emerson, parents to Caleb’s first wife, offer to sell Gabe their mercantile business. By the following month, he has not only signed papers on the store but has also been baptized. Seeing that Gabe is determined to stay, Rachel tells Danny the truth of his parentage but urges him to keep it a secret. However, the local gossip Sarah recognizes the similarities between the two and blurts out the truth in front of all three of them. When Gabe finally talks to Rachel afterward, he confesses that he had harbored feelings for her even long after their time together in St. Louis.

One day, Libby Gentry Granville comes to town with stepson Winston and daughter Blythe. Caleb and Gabe had been told by their late father, Lucas, that she had abandoned the family for another man and only later learned that Lucas had driven her away. She later reveals that Lucas had intended to marry Sarah before Libby arrived in town and later had an affair with Sarah after marrying Libby. Libby plans to make Wolf Creek her home for part of the year to renew her relationship with her family.

Gabe is out making deliveries on his wagon when he encounters Sarah being robbed by the same gang who beat him up (which includes Elton Thomerson, the abusive husband of a local woman named Meg), and while intervening, Gabe is shot. Sarah drives the unconscious Gabe back to Rachel, who once again patches him up and finally acknowledges that she has been fighting her own love for him. The book ends with Gabe proposing and Rachel kissing “the imperfect man who had stolen her heart. Danny’s prodigal father, finally come to a place filled with love. Home.”

Wolf Creek Father opens with widowed Sheriff Colt Garrett lonely and raising two kids, daughter Priscilla (Cilla) and son Brady, on his own. Local teacher Allison Grainger comes into his office with a pair of broken glasses and relates that his children had accosted her and caused the damage, telling him, “I’d rather resign my teaching position than deal with your children for another year.” The next day, the mayor of Wolf Creek calls Colt and Allison into his office to have them work out the solution to the problem of the children. After working together for a while, Colt confesses to Allison, “I am curious about the woman beneath the prim-and-proper exterior you show the world.”

Upon finding a list Colt has made of potential brides in Wolf Creek, Cilla and Brady decide that, of all the options, they like Allison best and so try to steer them into a closer relationship. When Colt expresses an interest in formally courting her, Allison is taken aback, assuming his sole interest is keeping her around for the children’s sake. When he presses, she asks, “If I were to agree to become your wife, would you make your peace with God and try to live for Him?” The next Sunday, Colt decides belatedly to go to church, but during the service his deputy Big Dan Mercer brings news—via Asa (Ace) Allen, a half-Cherokee, half-Irish friend of Colt—that Elton Thomerson has escaped from jail, and Colt goes in pursuit with the other two men. While they have him surrounded at his and Meg’s house, Ace kills Elton, saving Colt’s life. Spent after having narrowly escaped death, Colt arrives at Allison’s house while she and the children are asleep and, after checking on them, falls asleep himself. In the morning, he proposes to Allison, but she demurs until the story of Colt staying the night (spread by his children, knowing how such rumors brought the Gentrys together in the first book) threatens her career, and then she realizes that she loves him.

Wolf Creek Widow picks up six weeks after the events of the previous book, with Ace Allen and his mother, Awinita, helping Meg Thomerson with work on the farm and her laundry business as she recovers from her own injuries. Meg remains nervous around Ace, the man who killed her husband, even though she is relieved that Elton is dead and his days of abusing her are over. Ace is struggling with mixed emotions himself: “How can I ask God to forgive me when I’m sorry for shooting him but not sorry he’s dead?” Nita tries to reassure Meg that the people of Wolf Creek, despite Elton’s depredations, admired Meg because “no matter what happened, you never lost your smile and you stayed faithful to God.”

As they work together, Meg and Ace become increasingly attracted to each other, and she understands that he really can sympathize with her plight, having been beaten during a stint in prison many years back. Soon enough, Rachel brings back to Meg her two children, Teddy and Lucy, who had been in the care of Meg’s aunt and uncle while Meg was healing. On a trip to town, Meg hears that her mother, Georgina (Georgie) Ferris, and her mother’s boyfriend, Charlie Green, are in town (it was to escape Charlie’s attentions when she was younger that Meg married Elton). During a confrontation, Georgie directs some racist remarks toward Ace, who begins to worry how people might react if he and Meg were in a relationship. He disappears for a while, visiting his Cherokee grandmother for advice, during which time Rachel informs Meg that her mother is sick with consumption (tuberculosis). A few days after Thanksgiving, Colt comes to inform Meg that her mother is “real bad and asking for you.” Georgie had contracted pneumonia after demanding that the local preacher baptize her in the creek (she also sent Charlie away). Mother and daughter make amends shortly before Georgie dies. Some days later, Ace returns, having decided that “having the love of this strong, unbreakable woman would be well worth any pain that might come with it.”

The final book, Wolf Creek Wife, opens in early March 1887 and centers upon Blythe Granville. By this point, her mother Libby has opened a library in town and is engaged to Edward Stone, Rachel’s father, while Blythe’s brother Win has also relocated to Wolf Creek. Blythe herself is living there to avoid scandal arising out of her recent bigamous marriage in Boston, having eloped with a man who already (it was later discovered) had another wife (and who had used the marriage to drain her bank account). Days after her relocation, the mayor approached her about taking over the teaching position to be vacated by Allison Grainger following her nuptials (unmarried women being preferred as teachers at the time). While Blythe assented, she still “dreamed of owning her own boutique where she would style and sew gowns for the socially elite.”

On this March day, while out on her horse, she encounters the unconscious form of Will Slade, local sawmill owner (and object of scandal himself after his wife, Martha, had left him for a bigwig from Springfield, Missouri). She assembles a makeshift travois and transports him home, but his illness and the weather mean she cannot leave his side, no matter that “if word got out that she’d stayed overnight in the home of a single man, she would once again be the talk of the town,” but Blythe reckons “it was her Christian duty to do what she could for him, no matter what the outcome might be.” The next morning, Win, Sheriff Garrett, Deputy Big Dan Mercer, and Peacher McAdams arrive at the house and, seeing the two sleeping on the floor, jump to conclusions, with Win asserting that Will must now marry Blythe.

While Will recovers at Rachel’s clinic, mothers of Blythe’s students begin harassing her for her ostensibly unladylike behavior. Martha also returns to try to win her husband back. Will tries to block her efforts by announcing to her that he and Blythe are getting married, but his bluff soon spreads as news around Wolf Creek, and Will and Blythe agree to a marriage as a “business arrangement that benefits us both.” Blythe faints after the wedding ceremony but recovers.

Will and Blythe work to settle into a routine, but she knows little about housekeeping or cooking. He helps her with cooking, and she helps him to budget his business expenses better. But Blythe continues to have health issues and learns that she is three months pregnant, having the baby of the man who jilted her. Will intends to keep their marriage together, but she aims to have their marriage annulled, believing the presence of this baby too big an obstacle. However, during the night, Blythe loses the baby, and when Will goes to comfort her, they finally confess to each other their love. In an epilogue, just more than a month later, Will and Blythe have a second wedding ceremony “before truly becoming man and wife.”

In 2020, Wolf Creek Wedding was republished with Wolf Creek Homecoming in a one-volume paperback “Historical Classics” edition, while Wolf Creek Father was republished together with the similarly themed 2012 book Wooing the Schoolmarm by Dorothy Clark.

For additional information:
Richards, Penny. Wolf Creek Father. Toronto: Harlequin Books, 2015.

———. Wolf Creek Homecoming. Toronto: Harlequin Books, 2014.

———. Wolf Creek Wedding. Toronto: Harlequin Books, 2013.

———. Wolf Creek Widow. Toronto: Harlequin Books, 2015.

———. Wolf Creek Wife. Toronto: Harlequin Books, 2016.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas

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