Welcome back to MacKinlay, North Carolina. Its twenty-two years later at Golden Apple Farm and our story introduces Gavin and Emma’s oldest daughter, Charlotte, better known as “Charlie”….
Charlie seems born with the determination to be a doctor, but it’s the early 19th century and girls can’t be doctors. Yet even in the face of disbelief and downright ridicule, she holds tightly to her dream. In spite of overwhelming odds, she applies to Boston Medical College and awaits her answer.
Although their response rocks her world, it doesn’t shake her drive to own the name the townspeople of MacKinlay have given her—Doc Charlie. After listening to stories from her housekeeper, Grace, she’s convinced that Cherokee “green medicine” is the answer to her problems. If she could only find someone to teach her….
Whit Freeman, an affluent MacKinlay businessman, wants to buy some of her father’s land and won’t take “no” for an answer. Would the land really be slotted for his plan to add culture and refinement to MacKinlay, or does he have a darker purpose for the property? His “moonshining” venture perhaps? Or is there yet another reason he so desperately wants that land?
Whit’s son, Whitcomb, plays his own part in his father’s little game, but soon realizes the folly of insulting Charlotte MacKinlay! His efforts to repay her hospitality, however, takes him so much farther than he ever intended to go.
A sticky meeting with the town’s handsome new pastor, news of her best friend eloping, and a case of arson are nothing compared to her father’s announcement of her arranged marriage to “The MacGregor,” a man she’s never even met.
After her mother’s revelation about the gate’s mystical powers and a visit to Cherokee shaman, Little Hawk Croft, Charlie is still unsure whether she should take such a drastic step. A tragic revelation pushes her fears aside and Charlie escapes back to a time when the Cherokee roamed the Blue Ridge Mountains; back to a time when the town’s Indian name meant “Nowhere”; back before MacKinlay even existed.
There she finds Half Moon, a Cherokee medicine woman who takes the role of teacher, but some of the lessons Charlie must learn have nothing to do with medicine.
Unfortunately, the biggest challenge of her young life awaits her return to MacKinlay. She must meet the dreaded MacGregor, but her heart belongs to someone else.
