Lonesome Mountain

As a child, Lizzy spent an idyllic summer at eccentric Aunt Daffy’s “Sweet Apple Farm” in northern California. But her parents wouldn’t tell her why they’d come to get her early, refusing to let her visit again.  

Aunt Daffodil’s secrets and the shadows surrounding Buttermilk Falls deepen when Lizzy’s great-aunt dies and leaves her the farm, requiring her to stay a full year, tending apples and Christmas trees, before she can sell or lease it out.

Five years earlier, Gabriel’s troubled wife, Viola, deserted him and their infant daughter, Chloe. He struggles to overcome his past, while raising a timid child, who’s afraid of almost everything: dogs, snakes, spiders, and the thunderous storms that descend without warning from the cloud-shrouded summit of Lonesome Mountain.

When Lizzy hires Gabe to help restore the ramshackle farmhouse, they form an uneasy alliance as she bonds with his child, tangles with a stray dog that won’t go away, and unravels the mysteries of a quavering light up on the mountain and the uncertain fate of a runaway illegal.

In the shadow of Lonesome Mountain, will Lizzy and Gabe finally accept Aunt Daffy’s invitation to Live Simply, Love Deeply?


Patricia Hartmann is the author of historical romances: The Ojai—Pink Moment Promises, and Yosemite—One Last Golden Summer, and the romance novel, Secrets of Sandpiper Cove. She lives with her husband in Ojai, California in a 150-year-old farmhouse on a nine acre farm where they grown pixie tangerines. In the past, they ran a choose-and-cut Christmas trees farm, complete with vintage sleigh, country store and candy canes for the children. They have a his/mine/and ours family of eight children, fifteen grandchildren and four great grandchildren.Patricia is a teacher, writer and artist whose signature is to paint the artwork for each of her book covers.