Lieutenant Edward Rigby could not deny the echo of his best friend’s life as he traveled to Washington D.C.  Others would consider his arrival as a long delayed homecoming, but home was an illusion to him.  The streets were his home from the age of eleven until he met a Harvard student, James Hawkins, when he was nineteen.  He lived with the Hawkins family until the war started.  The unlikely friends served side-by-side throughout the turmoil until James sustained a paralyzing injury during a battle.  Then after the war, Eddie found himself traveling to a fort in Indian Territory as an army corporal under the command of James’s father.  His now wheelchair bound friend was at the fort working as a consult on Indian affairs.  They were stationed there until orders sent him to Kansas and the Hawkins family returned to the nation’s capital. The haze of events from the telegram bringing him to his friend’s deathbed in 1869 still seemed surreal.  He could still see Hallie kneeling in the snow beside his friend’s grave.  It was now 1874 and time to move forward.  Reconciling with his sister was his first priority. Then, there are promises to keep.

Hallie Price Hawkins still felt and heard James everywhere.  She took pride in the achievements of the women taking refuge in the shelter of Hallie’s House.  James named the home for her because of her once limited choices and because of her more recent accomplishments.  However, becoming his wife was the most unexpected and treasured.  Losing him still devastated her heart.  She lacked fulfilling only two of her final promises to James. Once she finished the official nursing program in Boston, only the hardest remained.

Lana Lynne reunites readers with beloved characters from her first two novels (Home Always Beckons:  A New Sunrise) (Trails of Change:  A New Sunset) and introduces an array of intricate new ones in the completion of her post-Civil War trilogy.   This novel is a true tapestry of lives joined by the common thread of the life of James Hawkins woven throughout each.