Christmas at the Sawmill: A Sweet Christian Mail-Order Bride Romance (Christmas in Jubilee Book 2)

She came two thousand miles to prove a tree could survive the mountain. She never expected the harder thing to be opening her own heart.

Frances Tarrant has spent nine years creating something no one else knows is hers.

Working quietly at the back bench of her family’s New York nursery, she has bred a remarkable winter-keeping apple—one she believes might succeed where every other attempt has failed. When her family prepares to claim the fruit as their own, Frances makes a decision no one understands.

She will leave.

Her destination is Jubilee, a remote Colorado mountain town where winter closes the pass for months. There, she will test her precious apple at an altitude where fruit trees have never managed to survive.

And there is another reason for the journey.

Through a strange custom that began the winter before, Frances has agreed to spend the season getting to know Gideon Voss, the owner of Jubilee’s sawmill. She arrives with carefully written terms: she will choose her own roof, she will not be hurried into marriage, and when the spring thaw comes, she will decide whether her answer is yes—or no.

Gideon is not at all the man Frances expected.

He is kind, generous, hardworking, and liked by nearly everyone in Jubilee. But there is something about him that troubles Frances deeply. He agrees too easily, avoids difficult choices, and seems determined to make everyone comfortable—even when the truth demands something harder.

Frances has no intention of settling for a man whose promises may never carry the weight of a choice.

So she sets herself a winter-long question.

Can a man who has spent his whole life pleasing everyone learn to truly choose?

As the mountain closes around them, Frances settles into the sawmill cookhouse, earns the respect of its rough crew, and begins the painstaking work of keeping her precious apple wood alive through the brutal Colorado winter.

Along the way, she and Gideon find themselves working side by side through dangerous nights, hard decisions, Christmas celebrations, and quiet moments neither of them expected.

But Frances has another battle to fight—one she never anticipated.

She has spent her entire life being the strong one. The capable one. The woman who needs no one.

And now, little by little, Gideon is seeing the woman beneath that hard-won strength.

With the mountain locked in snow and the spring thaw still months away, Frances must decide whether the greatest risk is trusting a man with her future—or finally allowing someone to see her heart.

Christmas at the Sawmill is a heartfelt Christian historical romance about love, faith, courage, belonging, and two guarded people discovering that the truest things in life cannot be rushed. Set against a breathtaking Colorado winter, it is a tender story of learning to listen, learning to choose, and learning that sometimes the hardest thing to grow is not a tree, but a heart.