A Texan’s Promise

‘A Texan’s Promise’ by Shelley Gray is a Christian historical cowboy romance. It is the first of three books in the Heart of a Hero series. This book is told through the eyes of three people: Miles Grant, Vanessa Grant, and Clayton Proffitt. The story starts off in Texas in 1873, after the Civil War.

Miles and Vanessa are brother and sister who live on the Circle Z ranch with their mother May and their step-father Price Venture. Price courted May shortly after her husband died and she quickly married him. Only May didn’t realize his true character until after it was too late. He was a drunk, sometimes violate man, and a womanizer who didn’t bother to hide that fact from his new wife after the wedding.

Clayton Proffitt was once a captain in the confederate army during the war. After the war, he had a lot to work through in his mind. Bill Grant, May’s first husband, hired Clayton and made him his foreman. Through the help of the Grant’s he slowly healed from the horrors of war. Before Bill died, he made a promise to protect Vanessa. Bill has been dead several years and he has kept watch over her and been her friend. One night he finds Vanessa crying in the barn at midnight, when she should be in the house sleeping. It doesn’t take much to understand what happened when he sees the bleeding cut on her cheek and two large bleeding stripes on her back.

Vanessa has loved Clayton from afar for some time, but he’s only acted as a friend around her. One night her step-father forced himself into her room. When she fought him, he slapped her and even used his belt on her back. Ashamed of what happened, when Clayton asks if she was raped, she lies and said that her mother came into the room before he could. (No rape ‘scene’ was written, it was only implied.) But the truth was that her mother didn’t enter her room until after he took her. Clayton doesn’t find out till much later in the book that she was raped. So Clayton decides that the only safe place for her to be is away from Price. Together the two of them ride out that night and head for his sister’s ranch in Colorado.

Miles is twenty years old and is still looked upon as a kid, rather than a man. He has tried his hardest to gain attention first from his father and then from his step-father. When he finds Clayton in Vanessa’s room gathering her things, he’s not happy. Clayton berates him for not interfering when Vanessa was crying for help and screaming. Clayton tells him that he should have helped rather than have hung back because he was scared of Price. Miles knows that the time has come to become a man and to get out of the shadow of Price. And Miles will have to make some hard choices when he goes with Price, who plans to drag Vanessa back to the ranch.

Read as Clayton and Vanessa realize their love for each other. And watch as Miles learns to not only become a man, but learns to look to God for his strength. This is a great story and there is lots of adventure, romance, suspence, lies, and learning to trust God. This is a great book and if you like the characters, Miles comes back in a later book looking for love.

Book format 

E-book format