KEOWEE VALLEY is set in the colonial period when settlers were few and far between and native tribes still owned the land. Quincy is a bluestocking aged 25 in 1768 and resigned to never marrying when a message comes to her Charleston home that her beloved cousin Owen who vanished in frontier land six months previously, has been found. Defying her rich grandfather she sets out to ransom him from the tribe who hold him, accompanied by a clergyman and a trunk of trade goods.

The town of Ninety-Six is protected by a fort, a British garrison which is about to be abandoned by the redcoats. Quincy cannot wander the Blue Ridge Mountains unguided so she seeks out a mountain man, finding one who introduces her to the chief called Carpenter in Keowee Town. Here she bravely asks to barter for land. She has no intention of returning to the stifling Carolina society. Granted enough land to homestead several families, provided she allows the tribe to pass safely, she starts to make a life for herself until a trapper can be found to go after Owen. When Jack Wolf turns up she is scared of him at first, but knowing she has to trust him, she allows him to take her trade goods and go after her cousin.

More homesteaders including a manumitted slave have joined her and the bitter cold of midwinter has arrived before Owen and Jack return. But Owen has had enough of adventuring and wants only to settle back East. The rest of the tale deals with the dangers of frontier life for the hardscrabble farmers, from bears to bandits, marauding tribes and Regulators resentful of a freedman. Jack has his heart set on Quincy as his wife, but he and his brother Ridge Runner are half Irish and half Cherokee, enough to exile Quincy from polite society forever. The majestic Spanish stallion Fire Eater she tames and the freedom to wear breeches in the cold, seem to compensate... but politics is catching up with them even here, and word of revolution reaches them, threatening to destroy all they hold dear.

The history and landscape of the period is vibrant, the smells and sights and sounds reaching off the page. KEOWEE VALLEY is a fine romance between a girl ahead of her times and a man who walks in two worlds. I recommend it highly to those interested in the period.