Heaven in His Arms

I really liked the setting of this novel, the Canadian frontier in 1670. All the characters were well developed and the storyline really interesting. Genevieve trades places with an impoverished noblewoman on a ship bound for Quebec, she is escaping a terrible past as a pickpocket and longs for a new life. She is to be one of the King's girls, French women who are sent to the new world as brides. When she arrives in Quebec she is incredibly sick. Andre is a wealthy trapper who is required to marry in order to obtain his trapping license. He has no desire for a wife and when he finds the very sick Genevieve he marries her believing she will die soon. Imagine his surprise when this beautiful French woman barges into his hotel in Montreal and claims to be his wife. Genevieve is insistent on going with her husband downstream to a Jesuit settlement. She really wants this marriage but her husband resists her charms and wants an annulment because he believes Genevieve will not stand the rigors of the Canadian wilderness. Here, Ms. Verge's writing is superb as she describes in detail the journey through the wilderness. It was incredibly easy to visualize all the majesty of Canada and the awe Genevieve had for it. The two leads are so good together. Genevieve is so resourceful and quite the strategist. Her husband has little chance against her sunny nature. Andre is a bit dark and brooding but never really cruel mainly because he believes he has his wife's best interests at heart even when she stubbornly insists on following him into uncharted areas. There are some truly funny scenes in this book and also tender and unexpected plot twists. I highly recommend this novel.

This is a wonderful adventure/romance taking place in the late 1600's and centering around Canadian settlements and the wilderness of the Great Lakes area. Andre is a fur-trapper who must marry in order to get a liscense. He is a wanderer and does not want to marry or have any chains in society and so chooses the sickliest woman available thinking she wasn't even going to survive the first winter. However, Genivive has survived much worse in her lifetime and refuses to let her husband leave her behind. Genivive falls in love with the land, and with the man who has led her into the wilderness. Andre struggles with his conscience thinking that Genivive deserves a fancy home in a civilized town and knows that is something a explorer and fur-trapper like him cannot provide for her. He is also suprised to find his wife is a lot tougher than the french society-miss he thought he had been forced to marry. I enjoyed their story, found the secondary characters entertaining, and felt the ending was just perfect. This book has a definite spot on my keeper shelf

Genevieve Lalande was a thief and almost a whore in the streets of Paris after tragedy sent her fleeing from her home. She trades places with one of the noble girls dowered by the king and destined to wed a man in Quebec. André Lefebvre (say that 3 times fast) is a trapper who will lose his license if he doesn't wed immediately. So he chooses the sickliest of the mail order brides, hoping she'll die while he's away that winter. Genevieve has other ideas once she recovers from her brief fever. She follows her reluctant husband on his trapping expedition into the wilderness and his heart. André is determined not to consummate his marriage, and arrives at all sorts of ways to pleasure his wife before finally succumbing on top of a cliff, overlooking a herd of antelope (how romantic). A return to civilization brings an interesting new use for gooseberry jam and unwanted troubles, but Genevieve and her lusty trapper go the way of the French and head for the Pacific (which is still only a rumor).