I loved this book. The premise of a religious and gently born young lady, breaking off her engagement and leaving her home to go to cook for a rancher in the wilds of Wyoming was compelling, and once I began I found it hard to put this book down. I really enjoyed the clever banter between the main characters. This is a wonderful love story. The supporting characters are interesting and captivating. While I am not a Mormon and felt the doctrine sometimes became tedious, it is a window into another culture and the story was strong enough to support my interest throughout. I love the way Carla Kelly writes. Though this is not her usual Historical Romance, I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good story about people who overcome extreme hardships and are brought together by a common ideal. ( )

Paul Otto is a tough, kind-hearted rancher who owns a cattle spread in Wyoming. After enduring 25 years of bad food, he desperately wants a cook for himself and his cowboys. Julia Darling is the eldest daughter of an affluent bank vice-president in Salt Lake City, 1909, who is having trouble finding her place in the world. She is a recent graduate of Fannie Farmer’s Cooking School in Boston, Mass., and feels stifled by the man to whom she is engaged. Julia and Paul’s paths cross when she rashly replies to his classified ad for a cook, and he hires her. She breaks her engagement and boards a train for Wyoming searching for she-knows-not-what.

Borrowed Light grabbed me. It is a departure for Carla Kelly, who is among my favorite authors. I have read most of her books, and this is the first one in which religious convictions have been important to the plot. In it she also sets her story in the American West. While I have enjoyed all of her novels set during and immediately following the Napoleonic War, I am delighted that she is now free to write about the American West with which she is so familiar.

Since I first began seeing customer reviews posted online several years ago, I have been surprised that some readers are antagonized by the inclusion of religious convictions in a romantic story. I see such convictions as being even more central to a person that romantic love. I consider this story sensitively written, and exceptionally well done--as one would expect from Carla Kelly. The story of Paul Otto and Julia Darling could not have been told without including their questioning and exploration of their faith through the lenses of past experiences and everyday life. I recommend it. ( )