Newly ordained Pastor Charlie Spencer prayed for a respectable city parish—cobblestones, gaslights, and a library where his sermons could shine. Instead, he’s sent to Sage Ridge, a wind-scoured Wyoming cattle town still limping after the Great Die-Up, with a church as thin as the herd and a congregation too tired to hope. The worst part? The one thing he begged God not to give him—cattle—is exactly what the town runs on…and exactly what he grew up around and walked away from.
Evelyn Hayes has no time for sermons or soft-handed preachers. Since the Whiteout storm that took her father and most of their herd, she’s been fighting to keep the family ranch—and the town’s remaining cattle—alive. As bank deadlines close in and another hard season looms, the last thing she needs is a bookish pastor even if he knows how to ride and work cattle.
When a risky cooperative cattle drive becomes the town’s best—and only—shot at survival, Charlie and Evelyn are forced into an uneasy partnership that tests his polished theology and her brittle distrust. On the trail through dust and storms, in a church that feels more like a ghost of what it was, they’ll have to decide whether God really sees forgotten places like Sage Ridge… and whether grace can grow in the very soil they both tried to leave behind.
A Place to Begin is the first book in the Grace & Gravel Roads series—where young pastors, wounded towns, and stubborn hearts discover that God’s mercy still walks the hardest roads.
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