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Growing up in White Deer, Texas a small town that boasts one blinking light, Linda Baten Johnson won blue ribbons for storytelling, and the dream of making up tales to entertain was born. As an adult, Linda spent many hours packing and unpacking as she and her husband George have lived in 15 different places in the United States and enjoyed a three-year assignment in England. In between moves, Linda earned her Master of Arts degree in English and history, worked as a Realtor, a teacher, and logged many volunteer hours.
One volunteer assignments was a National Park lighthouse in Michigan where she and her husband lived in the assistant keeper’s cottage. That posting inspired Mystery of Desolation Point, and she used historical records as the basis for the middle grade novel. Linda loves research and all books include an historical element.
She currently writes squeaky-clean romance novellas, eleven and counting, and collaborates with other authors in putting them in boxed sets.
Linda quickly learned the benefit of good critique partners and organizations such as Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and American Christian Fiction Writers.
Visit her website at www.lindabatenjohnson.com for additional information.
Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite
Inga Sorensen is a mail-order bride. She has arrived in the small town of Pierre, South Dakota, to marry a man she’s never met, one she’s corresponded with for several months. It was a long journey from her home in Norway and her English is not that good. Her arrival at the train station causes considerable consternation when only two men arrive to greet the train, neither being her intended. In fact, she quickly learns that her intended groom died of the influenza just days before her arrival. She is taken in by a brother, Tom, and his soon-to-be married sister, Sissy, reluctantly on the brother’s part. Only, as Inga soon learns, things may not be quite so bleak as she first surmised upon learning of her intended’s untimely death. And Tom learns a thing or two as well.
The Missing Groom is another book in Linda Baten Johnson’s South Dakota Collection. The author takes the very realistic historical fact of mail-order brides and presents a compelling plot that moves the plot forward at a good pace. The protagonist, Inga, faces grief, joy, fear and hardship with compassion and fortitude, as one would expect of a pioneer woman, someone willing to risk everything to travel alone across an ocean and a country to an uncertain future. As the climax approaches, Inga is faced with difficult decisions and unexpected conflict before the story resolves in a happy ending. A good romantic plot with a bit of historical relevance to the story.
