“Mr. Nelson is out of town for two weeks.”

“I know.”

The baritone tingled up her spine and heated the back of her neck. She lowered the two bills to the blotter. After eight years, she was alone again with Frank Novotny.

He’d always been the handsomest boy in town. As a man, he was stunning. Even his reliance on a cane to get around couldn’t change that. Not when he wore tan flannel pants with a white shirt open at the neck, with his dark-brown hair blown over his forehead. The man could give Rudolph Valentino a run for his money.

Then again, the last time she’d set eyes on him, he had had two black eyes and a cut lip from her brother Purl’s fists. Her mean-tempered older brother had caught them in a midnight kiss at the annual New Year’s dance and threatened to break Frank’s neck. Purl’s rage had convinced Edith he’d do it.

Frank stood, his dark eyes fixed on her and that familiar half smile sliding into view as he hung his hat on the rack by the entrance.

Rising to her feet, Edith flattened her palms on the desktop. “Christmas cards, birthday notes, at least a dozen letters, and not one reply. Not one.” Her voice sank to a hiss. “What do you have to say for yourself, you rat?”

And so we meet the hero of EDITH HOBSON DECLARES INDEPENDENCE.

Frank Novotny started out as a rich boy in small town who fell for Edith Hobson while they were in high school. However, his mother’s plans for Frank didn’t include a poor farmer’s daughter, much less the daughter of a woman she detested. After graduation in 1914 Frank was packed off to college because his mother wanted him to be a doctor. College was in Chicago because his mother wanted him far, far away from Edith. The New Year’s dance referenced above took place on January 1, 1915, eleven years before the story opens.

At age 18, Frank didn’t have the nerve to defy his only living parent, so when she shipped him back to Chicago early, he went. But later in 1915, with World War I tearing up Europe, he volunteered for the American Field Service, which was a way to support the Allies by transporting their wounded from the front lines to medical facilities. AFS personnel were non-combatants, so their presence did not violate U.S. agreements of neutrality at the time.

Behind the scenes peek: I first wanted Frank to be a volunteer pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille, but the survival rate of pilots on either side of the Western Front was abysmal. Casualties among ambulance drivers occurred regularly, as squads were stationed just behind the front lines, in range of artillery fire. But Frank’s chances of survival increased considerably.  

Even with a better survival rate, Frank has permanent physical damage from the war and he never wants to see another mangled body again. As the story opens in 1926, he is now a budding architect.  In his home town of Gravel Hill, he’s called a coward because he never served on active duty. He was injured before the U.S. joined the war. He has the equivalent of a military discharge for his volunteer service, but many civilians believe, wrongly, that the ambulance service was just a cushy way of avoiding battle.

All Frank wants to do in Gravel Hill to bury his mother and get her house ready to sell. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing left in town for him to return to.

Then he learns that winding up his mother’s estate means working with Edith Hobson. The girl he left behind. The girl whose letters he ignored. The girl who denied their relationship in front of the whole town.  

In the war, Frank faced bullets, artillery fire, and truckload after truckload of suffering soldiers. Afterward, he faced his mother to choose a life that would give him a measure of peace.

Now he’s forced to face Edith. A very angry Edith.

That’s fine with Frank. He’s not too happy with her, either. Even if he wouldn’t mind getting her alone and kissing the daylights out of her.