1810, upstate New York. 21-year-old Ella Kenyon is happiest gliding through the thick woods around her small frontier town, knife in hand, her sharp eyes tracking game. A gift for engineering is in her blood, but she would gladly trade it for more time in the forest. If only her grandfather's dying wish hadn't trapped her into a fight she never wanted: for a flax-milling machine that could rescue both her family and her struggling town. Perhaps making flax--which grows in the North--as profitable as cotton at a time when cotton had yet to become king. If only she wanted it. Torn between what she wants and what she owes to others, no one could envy the choices she has to make. Nor the need to elude a ruthless foe determined to steal the machine.
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