The Horse Soldier

Set a few years after the end of the Civil War, romance novelist Merline Lovelace’s The Horse Soldier (2000), the first of her Garretts of Wyoming series, revolves around a couple getting a second chance at love after their rushed early marriage is scuttled for a variety of external reasons. Against the backdrop of raids against Native Americans around the Wyoming Territory, a headstrong mother and her young daughter try to find safe harbor—all the while negotiating their relationships with a soldier who never thought he would see the love of his life again.

The novel tells the story through flashbacks, but this summary will instead describe events chronologically.

Southern belle Julia Robichaud grows up in a wealthy family in New Orleans. At the outbreak of the Civil War, while Union spy Andrew Garrett is working undercover in that city, he and Julia meet and fall in love. After a whirlwind courtship, they marry in secret. Several days after the wedding, Andrew leaves New Orleans to report the results of his spy work, fully intending to return for Julia soon.



However, while he is away, his cover is blown. As soon as he returns, Julia’s Confederacy-aligned uncle shoots him, telling Julia that Andrew is dead, though, in reality, Andrew is sent to a prisoner of war camp. While Julia nurses her broken heart, the uncle has the marriage annulled and convinces her that Andrew was just using her for his spy work. In the meantime, Andrew assumes that Julia betrayed him to her uncle, and bitterly regrets the marriage, not knowing about the annulment. During his imprisonment, Andrew is tortured; eventually, he is released just in time to fight at the Battle of Andersonville.

Julia quickly marries Phillip Bonneaux, with whom she has a daughter, Suzanne. However, Phillip turns out to be a degenerate gambler and soon leaves the family to head west to seek his fortune in the Montana goldfields.

The novel opens in 1867, seven years after Julia’s marriage to Andrew. Penniless, Julia sets out for Wyoming to try to find Phillip. On the way, she and her young daughter run into wagon trouble and are stranded in Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory. There, she runs into a familiar man—Andrew, who is now a major and second-in-command of the fort. Seeing him, Julia faints, since she believed that he was dead.



After they clarify their stories, each shocked to discover that neither has betrayed or used the other, the honorable Andrew wants to help Julia while she waits for news of Phillip, though she is fairly clear that she wants nothing to do with him. He finds Julia a job as a laundress for the camp—a demeaning step down for a woman once known as the Belle of New Orleans. Julia befriends some of the residents of the fort: Mary Donovan, whose large family becomes Suzanne’s playmates; the sadistic Colonel Cavanaugh who is in control of the fort; and Walks In Moonlight, the wife of the fort’s scout Lone Eagle, whose daughter Little Hen also befriends Suzanne.

No matter how much Julia pushes Andrew away, it is clear that he has never stopped loving her. Her proximity and helplessness make it hard for him to swallow his feelings. She, on the other hand, wants to limit her dependence on Andrew as much as possible, having learned the hard way that relying entirely on another person is a precarious proposition. Still, soon she too is unable to resist her feelings any longer and the two develop a physical relationship.

At the same time, Andrew is doing his best to make sure that Julia and her daughter remain in his life forever. This is proving difficult—Julia might love Andrew, but Suzanne wants her own father back and believes that Andrew stands in the way of Phillip’s returning. The little girl does her best to alienate the man, but Andrew perseveres calmly and gently, eventually winning Suzanne over with his many attempts to gain her trust.



When word comes from Montana that Phillip is dead, Julia and Andrew breathe a sigh of relief that their seemingly impossible situation has been resolved in this nonconfrontational way. They make plans to leave the fort together to find a place to settle down and be a family. However, just as they are about to depart, Phillip shows up at Fort Laramie—the report of his death was wrong. He heard about Julia and Suzanne coming to find him and decided to meet them halfway.

Torn and confused, Julia doesn’t know what to do. She decides to act in what she assumes is the best interest of Suzanne, and goes back to Phillip. Together, she, Phillip, and Suzanne start making their way back toward New Orleans when Phillip is shockingly killed on the road. Horrified but stoic, Julia makes her way back to the fort. Now, she and Andrew can be together for good.