Hearth (Rowan Glen Book 1)

She was promised to a man she did not choose.
He was a wounded Irish exile who had already lost too much.
Together, they crossed an ocean to build a home no one could take from them.
Scotland, 1748.
Mairi MacLeod has been raised to obey, endure, and marry where she is told. But when her uncle arranges her future like a business bargain, Mairi sees the truth clearly: if she stays, her life will never belong to her.
Cormac Ó Raghallaigh has survived war, exile, betrayal, and the bloody aftermath of Culloden. He has no estate, no safe name, and no reason to believe happiness was ever meant for him. But when Mairi chooses freedom over obedience, Cormac becomes the one man willing to risk everything to help her run.
Their escape takes them from Scotland’s shadowed glens to the dangerous Atlantic crossing, then into the raw promise of colonial America. On the Great Wagon Road, every mile tests them: fever, forged papers, land agents, old betrayals, hunger, and the brutal truth that a new country can be as ruthless as the old one.
But Mairi is no fragile runaway.

With ink, wit, courage, and a will sharpened by every man who tried to silence her, she learns to read contracts, defend their names, and claim space in a world built to doubt her. Cormac, scarred by war and guilt, must learn that love is not another battlefield—and that being chosen freely may be the hardest mercy of all.
When they reach the valley that will become Rowan Glen, nothing is easy. The land is disputed. The cabin must be built by hand. Winter is coming. Their marriage, still tender and untested, must become more than vows spoken in danger.
It must become a hearth.
Rich with frontier hardship, slow-burn romance, found family, Scottish and Irish resilience, and the fierce beauty of ordinary survival, Hearth is the first book in the Rowan Glen saga: a sweeping historical family series about love, legacy, and the making of a home.
For readers who love emotional historical fiction, frontier family sagas, marriage-of-choice romance, and stories where every loaf of bread, every tree planted, and every door opened from the inside matters.