The Cowboy Says Yes

Fox (Undercover K-9 Cowboy) launches her Rustlers Creek series with this bittersweet treat. Hadley Wayne is TV’s Cowgirl Gourmet, a down-home Montana girl with a handsome cowboy husband and a flourishing culinary empire. But underneath all the glitz and glam is a deep pain: the memory of Jessica, the daughter she and Zack lost to a late-term miscarriage two years earlier. Since the loss, both Hadley and Zack have tried to push their pain aside, but all it’s done is push them further apart. When Hadley and Zack’s childless state becomes a national conversation, and events start dropping Hadley based on her proclamation that she no longer wants children, the pair are forced to deal with the elephant in the room. Can they find a way to move forward or is their marriage over? Despite the heavy topic, Fox keeps the pacing brisk, with an unpredictably twisting plot. The achingly real characters and their plausible conflicts make it easy for readers to sympathize with both husband and wife, and cheer for them to find a way back to happily ever after, whether that’s together or apart. Few readers will come out of this dry-eyed. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary. (Apr.)