Alice Wilde, The Raftsman's Daughter

the long version

His proposal of marriage rebuffed by his cousin, a New York man meets the beautiful daughter of a Michigan sawmill owner and falls in love. Set in “Center City” in the 1840s.* Metta Victor (1831 – 1885) was raised in Wooster, OH and lived about 1850 or 1851 in Ypsilanti, MI with her sister. She later moved to Mansfield, OH, where she married a newspaperman, and they soon moved to New York City. She had an extremely prolific and successful writing career, publishing poetry, romances, mysteries, short stories, humor and even cookbooks under a dozen pen names. At one point she had a 5-year, $25,000 contract with the New York Weekly.