Bargain Bride

<p><span style=color: rgba(128 128 128 1)>To Ginny almost anything would be better than living with the miserly good-for-nothing distant cousins who had claimed her and all she possessed when her parents had died of fever during the wagon-train journey to Oregon Territory.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(128 128 128 1)>At the age of ten they had married her off-for a very good price-to a much older farmer because girls were in great demand since married men could take title to twice the amount of land the government allowed a bachelor. On her fifteenth birthday kindly Mr. Mayhew came to claim his bride. Unfortunately on that same day he had a stroke and Ginny the young Widow Mayhew was left in possession of his well-built house and flourishing farm.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(128 128 128 1)>This sometimes amusing and often touching story in which Ginny learns to fend off a stream of suitors who have their eyes only on her rich farmland gives a vivid sense of life as it was during a brief period in our history when marriage was often considered a practical necessity instead of an affair of the heart.</span></p>