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Sandra Dallas

Biography

Sandra Dallas

Sandra Dallas, dubbed “a quintessential American voice” in Vogue Magazine, is the author of over a dozen novels, including PRAYERS FOR SALE and TALLGRASS, many translated into a dozen languages and optioned for films. Six-time winner of the Willa Award and four-time winner of the Spur Award, Dallas was a Business Week reporter for 35 years covering the Rocky Mountain region, and began writing fiction in 1990. She has two daughters and lives with her husband in Denver and Georgetown, Colorado.

Sandra Dallas

Books by Sandra Dallas

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Sisters Helen and Lutie have moved to Denver from Iowa after their parents’ deaths. They share a small, neat house and make a modest income from a rental apartment in the basement. When their tenant dies from the Spanish Flu, they are thrust into caring for the woman’s small daughter, Dorothy. Soon after, Lutie comes home from work and discovers a dead man on their kitchen floor and Helen standing above the body. She has no doubt Helen killed the man --- Dorothy’s father --- in self-defense, but she knows that will be hard to prove. Meanwhile, Lutie also worries about her fiancé “over there.” As it happens, his wealthy mother harbors a secret of her own and helps the sisters as the danger deepens.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

1916. The two-street town of Wallace is not exactly what Ellen Webster had in mind when she accepted a teaching position in Wyoming. Within a year’s time, though, she has fallen in love --- both with the High Plains and with a handsome cowboy named Charlie Bacon. Life is not easy, but Ellen and Charlie face it all together, their relationship growing stronger with each shared success and each deeply felt tragedy. Ellen finds purpose in her work as a rancher’s wife and in her bonds with other women settled on the prairie. Not all of them have loving husbands, not all came to Wallace willingly, and not all of them can survive the cruel seasons. But they look out for each other, share their secrets and help one another in times of need. And the needs are great and constant.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction

It's February 1852, and all around Chicago, Maggie sees postings soliciting "eligible women" to travel to the gold mines of Goosetown. A young seamstress with a small daughter, she has nothing to lose. She joins 43 other women and two pious reverends on the dangerous 2,000-mile journey west. None are prepared for the hardships they face on the trek or for the strengths they didn't know they possessed. Maggie discovers she’s not the only one looking to leave dark secrets behind. And when her past catches up with her, it becomes clear a band of sisters will do whatever it takes to protect one of their own.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Ellen is putting the finishing touches on a wedding quilt made from scraps of old dresses when the bride-to-be --- her granddaughter June --- unexpectedly arrives and announces she’s calling off the marriage. With the tending of June’s uncertain heart in mind, Ellen tells her the story of Nell, a Kansas-born woman who goes to the High Plains of New Mexico Territory in 1898 in search of a husband. Working as a biscuit-shooter, Nell falls for a cowboy named Buddy. She sees a future together, but she can’t help wondering if his feelings for her are true. When Buddy breaks her heart, she runs away. In her search for a soul mate, Nell will run away from marriage twice more before finding the love of her life.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

It is 1880, and Gracy Brookens is the only midwife in a small Colorado mining town where she has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime. The women of Swandyke trust and depend on Gracy, and most couldn't imagine getting through pregnancy and labor without her by their sides. But everything changes when a baby is found dead...and the evidence points to Gracy as the murderer. She didn't commit the crime, but clearing her name isn't so easy when her innocence is not quite as simple, either.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction

It is 1864, and Eliza Spooner's husband, Will, has joined the Kansas volunteers to fight the Confederates. When the unthinkable happens, she takes in a woman and child who have been left alone and made vulnerable by the war, and she finds solace and camaraderie amongst the women of her quilting group. When she is asked to help hide an escaped slave, she must decide for herself what is right, and who she can count on to help her.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

Wealthy New York socialite Beret Osmundsen has been estranged from her younger sister, Lillie, for a year when she gets word from her aunt and uncle that Lillie has died suddenly in Denver. What they do not tell her is that Lillie had become a prostitute and was brutally murdered in the brothel where she had been living. When Beret discovers the sordid truth of Lillie’s death, she makes her way to Denver, determined to find her sister’s murderer.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction

TRUE SISTERS tells the story of four women, brought together on the harrowing journey of the Martin Handcart Company, and united by the promises of prosperity and salvation in a new land. Through the ties of female friendships and the strength born from suffering, each one tests the boundaries of her faith and learns the real meaning of survival along the way.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction

From the New York Times bestselling author of WHITER THAN SNOW and PRAYERS FOR SALE comes a novel about the secrets and passions of three generations of women who have all lived in the same Victorian home called the Bride's House.

by Sandra Dallas - Fiction, Historical Fiction

During World War II, a family finds life turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers.