Short-Straw Bride by Karen Witemeyer
- Lilyana Page
- Sep 8
- 4 min read
Book Title: Short Straw Bride
Author: Karen Witemeyer
Category: Fiction, Historical Romance
Age Group: Older teens and adults
Part of a Series? Yes (The Archer Brothers Series).
Place In Series: Book 1
Other Books In Series: Stealing the Preacher (review coming soon), A Cowboy Unmatched (novella), plus An Archer Family Christmas contained in a novella collection titled An Old-Fashioned Texas Christmas.
Ever since Meredith Hayes met Travis Archer when she was a young girl, she's been in love. Never mind that the reason they met was because she trapped her leg in a foot trap that he had set. Never mind that she's had to deal with an uneven gait from that day on as a consequence. In Meredith's mind, Travis is a hero. Her hero.
When Meredith overhears a secret conversation between her deceitful almost-fiancé and one of his cohorts, she knows she has to warn Travis of what is coming his way. Unable to convince a lawman of what she overheard, she decides that the only way to warn Travis of the danger is to give him the message herself.
Travis and his brothers don't cotton to trespassers, decorating their uninviting gate with signs like, "Trespassers will be shot on sight," and "To conduct business, fire two shots and wait." Determined to repay Travis for his help in freeing her from that trap, Meredith disregards the signs, hitches up her skirts and clambers over the gate.
In her efforts to warn Travis that men are coming that very night to light his barn on fire in an attempt at forcing him into selling his property, Meredith gets accidentally involved in the fray. Travis tells her to stay in the house where she will be safe, but Meredith refuses to sit still. If she has to be stuck in the middle of everything, she might as well be helping. When the criminals manage to slip past the waiting Archer brothers to the barn, she fires warning shots to alert the Archers. The brothers tear off after the arsonists, thinking that they interrupted them in time, Meredith is left alone at the house. She discovers that the criminals actually did succeed in setting fire to the barn from the inside. The Archers return to the house, devastated to discover that their barn is in flames and beyond saving. Worse, Meredith has been fighting the dangerous thing alone. Not long after the brothers return, Meredith sustains an injury to the head while fighting the fire side by side with Travis.
Horrified, Travis carries her inside the house and fetches Crockett, one of his brothers, since he knows the most about how to treat injuries and the like. Crockett does what he can, and then the two of them situate her in Travis' bedroom, where Crockett insist she stay until she is recovered enough to return home safely. Travis moves out of his room to bunk with his younger brother so that Meredith can have privacy in the form of a room all to herself.
Unfortunately, Meredith does not recover before her Uncle Everett, who is also her legal guardian, learns of her whereabouts. He barges into the room she has been staying in, escorted by the Archers. Horrified by the fact that she has spent the night in a home of only men, he demands that one of the Archers marry her to save her reputation, despite the fact that nothing unseemly happened.
Not wishing to be permanently foisted upon men who hardly know her, Meredith desperately tries to come up with another plan that will satisfy her angry uncle and the Archer brothers, who are determined to do right by her.
Unable to come up with such a plan, Meredith soon finds herself bound in a marriage of duty with none other than Travis Archer. While she has secretly loved him for years, will he ever find it in his heart to love her in return? Can their sudden marriage flourish into a loving relationship like the one Meredith has always dreamed of, or will it forever be a joyless union filled with nothing but resentment?
I LOVED the story premise behind Short-Straw Bride. I mean, really. It's filled with dangerous scenarios, mystery, funny moments, sad moments, suspense. I wouldn't recommend it for younger teens, as it is a romance (but a clean one--the only kind I read), and would be more appropriate for an older age group. Upper teens and adults.
I liked that Short-Straw Bride is not only a clean romance, but it also has a Christian influence to it as well. I appreciate that Karen Witemeyer wove faith into the story. If you also like Christian Romance, then there's a good chance you'll enjoy this book.
Female protagonists with a bit of spunk have a way of getting me, I think. Please see books like Stealing the Preacher, the other book in this series, as well as others like the Middle Grade novels in The Fairytale Reform School series that I was obsessed with a few years ago. Pretty much any book by Melanie Dickerson (featuring a female protagonist, of course) sparks my interest and appreciation as well.
P.S. If you are on Goodreads, you can find me here.
