Nedra

Hugh Ridgeway arrives late to his own engagement party, brushing billiard chalk from his sleeve, and finds his fiancee Grace Vernon waiting beneath the weight of her formidable Aunt Elizabeth's expectations. They want a simple wedding. Society demands a spectacle. So these two stubborn lovers hatch a daring plan: they'll escape Chicago's rigid social world and elope, setting sail for Manila and a new life beyond their families' control. But the sea has other plans. Shipwrecked on a mysterious island, Hugh and Grace must survive not only the elements but a dangerous enemy force that threatens everything they've fled toward. What begins as a rebellion against Victorian propriety becomes a test of love itself, pitting one passion against another in a land where the old rules no longer apply. McCutcheon weaves together romance, adventure, and suspense in this breathless tale of two young people who discover that running away is easy; standing together is everything. For readers who crave old-fashioned storytelling with genuine stakes, where love must be earned through fire rather than inherited through circumstance.