Romantic Entanglement

Miss Brigham cleared her throat for the fourth time that afternoon. "Samantha, dear, pay attention. As I was saying-"

Samantha watched Miss Brigham's lips move, but she didn't hear the words coming out. She nodded when it seemed appropriate and stared at the pages of the Bible. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't concentrate this afternoon. In the cellar this morning she had found something too disturbing to focus on her studies.

She had opened the trunk and begun looking at the novels. She finished Rebel Paradise the night before and wanted to try something different. Several of the slim novels piqued her interest until she held up one called Forever Young. On the cover, a raven-haired woman stood defiantly in a field, her eyes looking skyward. This didn't look much different from the sixty-eight other covers, but when she read the description on the back, the book fell from her numb fingers.

In Forever Young, a widowed woman named Samantha Young arrives in the town of Amaranthine, Kansas to start a new life on her own. Almost immediately, Samantha comes into conflict with Frederick Casey, a railroad baron who owns almost everything in town. When Samantha refuses to sell her farm or open her heart to Casey, it leads to a dramatic showdown.

Samantha had thought Miss Brigham came up with the name Samantha Young randomly, but had she intended it as something more? The parallels between the book and her real-life situation seemed too many to be coincidence. Samantha in the book came to a small town with no family, just like her. Then there was Frederick Casey, who ran the town and had the same initials as Reverend Francis Crane. Was Samantha's name supposed to be a hidden message?