The Sweetwood Bride is one of the very few Pamela Morsi historicals I’ve never read. Set in post-Civil War Tennessee, the book starts with what appears to be a literal shotgun marriage.

We learn right off the bat why Euly Toby and Moss Collier must marry, and I suspect some readers will get turned off right away. Euly Toby is most definitely not one of the blandly inoffensive, borderline saintly heroines readers encounter in too many historical romances. Not even close. Pretty much from the word go we learn that she has lied, schemed and tricked her way into her marriage. I know some readers won’t want to go much further with that, but Pamela Morsi is a very good author, and I was curious to see what she would do to redeem this mess.

As it turns out, Euly Toby’s sharecropper father has died, leaving the family destitute. With her siblings farmed out to various neighboring families, Euly hits upon the idea of claiming someone compromised her so that said man will have to marry her, thus giving her family a place to be reunited. And that’s kind of what happens in this book. Unlike Euly, Moss Collier seems to have a deep-rooted integrity and having been forced somewhat angrily into marriage, he determines to do right by the Toby siblings. When he moves Euly up to his home, he lets her collect her younger siblings to take with her.

It’s clear from the early chapters that while Moss finds Euly attractive, he isn’t going to just sweep this whole “I lied to make you marry me” ploy of hers under the rug. Instead we see them working through initial distrust (richly deserved) and eventually finding their way to more lasting love. The whole story plays out against the day to day life of a busy household full of children, farm work, local townspeople flitting in and out. Oh, and there’s also Moss’ reclusive uncle who lives with him and doesn’t much care for having life turned upside down. Even with so much going on in the background of the story, the romance basically worked for me. The story is sweet, and even though it deals with some serious themes, there is a lighthearted feel to it that makes Euly and Moss’ world feel quite engaging.

The novel does have a few off-putting aspects to it, though. Euly’s deception is probably the big one, though I have to admit I got way more annoyed by her constantly referring to Moss as “the husband-man” way more than anything in the actual plot. In addition, the epilogue just didn’t do it for me. Instead of enjoying the happily ever after, I found myself doing the mental math and realizing that some characters seemed to have aged at a rate that didn’t match the number of years between main story and epilogue. The book has its cheesy moments, and I don’t think it’s Morsi’s best, but it does still end up being a sweet story.