November 1899. New York society belle Louisa MacGregor, heartsick after a broken engagement, flees her old life aboard the last westbound train of the season, whose track cuts through the very heart of the steep and forbidding Sierra Nevada Mountains.

When an early blizzard traps her train in a remote mountain pass, Louisa is fast asleep in her luxurious palace car. The big train proves too heavy to make it over the snow-covered summit, and the engineer makes a fateful decision: to lighten the load, he crowds all his passengers into the first two cars and leave the rest of his train behind to the mercy of the elements.

Asleep, Louisa does not hear the conductor’s urgent cries, and she and her palace car are left behind. When she awakens, she finds herself cold, alone, and deserted in the most rugged wilderness on the continent.

She is near despair when a solitary mountain man—whom she comes to know only as ‘Bandit’—locates her abandoned train. The handsome, mysterious Bandit—who seems to carry with him a deep sadness of his own—leads Louisa over the mountaintops and down to his tidy cabin, nestled in a secluded valley surrounded by the towering peaks of the High Sierra.

With no prospect of rescue until spring, Lou and Bandit must find a way to survive the deadliest winter in fifty years. Trapped in a wild mountain paradise that is by turns unspeakably beautiful and utterly terrifying, these two lost people must learn to trust each other—and, perhaps, find the true meaning of life, love, and redemption.

“Beautifully rendered historical romance.” San Francisco Book Review

“A perfect story for curled-up-on-the-couch reading.” Readers’ Favorite

”Think Yellowstone meets Bridgerton.” Manhattan Book Review