A Union of Broken Lives: A Post-Civil War Mail-Order Bride Romance

A Union of Broken Hearts
A Post–Civil War Mail-Order Bride Romance
by Susan Leigh Carlton.

In 1870, the war may be over—but its wounds still bleed.
Rebecca Caldwell is a Confederate widow in York County, South Carolina, struggling to hold on to the small farm her husband died defending. Buried far from home at Missionary Ridge, he left behind no grave—only memory, grief, and crushing Reconstruction taxes that threaten to take what little Rebecca and her young daughter have left. With survival closing in on her from every side, Rebecca makes an unthinkable choice: she answers a mail-order marriage advertisement.
Wade Morgan is not the man she expected.
A Union veteran and widower, Wade returned from the war to learn his first wife had died of smallpox—and that he had a young son who barely knew him. Seeking stability rather than romance, Wade proposes a marriage of practicality and respect. But when Rebecca learns which side he fought for, the past rises like a specter between them.
Bound by necessity and haunted by loss, Rebecca and Wade enter a marriage shadowed by the war that shaped them both. As they build a household together, their children form a fragile bond—and force two guarded adults to confront the possibility of healing. Yet one terrible truth remains unspoken: Wade may have fought in the very battle where Rebecca’s husband was killed.
Can love survive when it is born from opposite sides of a divided nation? And can a woman who has lost everything risk her heart one final time?
A Union of Broken Hearts is a poignant, slow-burn historical romance about grief, courage, and the quiet, hard work of reconciliation—where love does not erase the past, but dares to grow in its aftermath.