The Loyal Heart

In The Loyal Heart, Robert came to Galveston to fulfill his promise to a dying man and look after his widow. He didn’t expect to find love in the unlikeliest of places.

About The Loyal Heart

Robert Truax, former Second Lieutenant and Confederate officer in the Civil War, made a promise to his comrade Phillip Markham. If anything happened to Phillip, Robert would look after his beloved wife, Miranda. She was his life, his world, his everything.

After the war, Robert is left to pick up the pieces and fulfill his pact. When he arrives at Miranda’s home in Galveston, Texas, things are worse than he imagined. Phillip’s name has been dragged through the mud, everyone in town believes him to be a traitor, and his widow is treated as an outcast. Even more disturbing is her emotional well-being. Miranda seems hopeless, lost, and so very alone.

Robert had thought his duty would be simple. He would help Miranda as quickly as possible in order to honor a promise. But the moment Robert laid eyes on her, his plans changed. He’s mesmerized by her beauty and yearns to help her in any way he can. He makes it his duty to protect Miranda, turn her reputation around, and to find some way to help her smile again. But it doesn’t prove to be an easy task—Robert knows something about Phillip that could shake Miranda to the core and alter her view of the man she thought she knew so well.

My Thoughts

In a time when many young men lost their lives and left widows and children to fight to make their way in a world that didn’t see them as individuals – Robert made a promise to his comrades, if anything were to happen to any of them they would take care of that person’s family. Robert would have never have known how quickly that this would come into play when his friend Phillip dies in captivity.

Phillip’s love of his life, Miranda, has been left alone to transfer their home into a lodging and suffers from being an outcast as Phillip has been marked a traitor. Robert is livid at the thought of his friend being named a traitor but can not because of the secret nature of Phillip’s role during the war. This is when a great mystery develops as Robert begins to try to uncover who is destroying Phillip’s name and who is the root cause of Miranda’s pain. Every time I thought that I knew who could be the culprit for spreading such awful lies, a new twist is added and I realize I am wrong.

As Robert tries to solve the mystery, he quickly falls for the lovely Miranda as he struggles to understand his loyalty to his friend who has passed away and this lonely young woman. Both characters are perfect for each other but struggle through their internal war with themselves with the notion is this relationship okay to develop? I completely understood their struggle but felt that Phillip would have been happy to know that the two people he loved the most would have found happiness and love in each other.

A fantastic novel from start to finish – I did not want to put this one down! It was well written, developed at a great pace and always kept you guessing at what/who is the culprit for hurting Phillip’s name and Miranda’s life. A definite must read!

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Rating: 5/5

About the Author

Shelley Shepard Gray is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, a finalist for the American Christian Fiction Writers prestigious Carol Award, and a two-time HOLT Medallion winner. She lives in southern Ohio, where she writes full-time, bakes too much, and can often be found walking her dachshunds on her town’s bike trail.

Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.