Lasting Promise

Editions:ebook, Paperback

Can love survive the secrets buried deep in the plains?

Gus Quaid has endured life’s cruelest blows—none more devastating than the loss of his wife to a Brule Sioux raid. Content with solitude and his work as an Army scout, he avoids entanglements until a bold, city-bred beauty in a Fort Benton saloon catches his eye. Intrigued by her fire and desperation, he makes a daring proposal—and is promptly rejected. But Gus isn’t one to walk away from a challenge.

Tori Barrett has known betrayal and hardship, first by a husband who left her broken, then by a business partner with dangerous demands. On the run and desperate for a way out, she sees in Gus a chance at safety, even if his penetrating gaze unsettles her carefully guarded secrets. With the promise of protection, she boards the Nellie Peck bound for Fort Randall, but Tori quickly learns Gus’s trust is hard-won—and easily shattered.

As the pair journey toward the railroad, the rugged plains strip away pretense, forcing them to confront old wounds and undeniable longing. But Tori’s past has a long reach, and when they arrive in Ogallala, it brings a reckoning neither of them expects.

Faced with betrayal, guilt, and a shocking revelation from Gus’s own shattered past, they must decide if the love growing between them is strong enough to survive—or if the frontier will claim their hearts, as it has so many before.

Published: October 28, 2025

Genres:

Historical, Western

Tags:

historical fiction, historical fiction novels, historical romance, women's fiction

About the Author

Susanna Lane

After a rewarding career as a teacher of science, a visit to the Rocky Mountains led a spellbound Susanna Lane to resurrect stories from history and write about the settlement of the West. As part of absorbing details for the locales of her stories, she learned to ride horses, fit into cattle drives, and hike to remote regions of the Rockies.

Married for forty-three years to an avid gardener and traveler who shares her interest in historical locations, Susanna loves to visit new places, read, and spend time with family and friends. In addition to her spouse, she has two grown sons and their charming wives. Best of all, she has four darling grandchildren who fill her life with delight.

Susanna's debut novel, Imperfect Promise, took home both a Western Writers of America Spur Award and a Will Rogers Medallion Award.

Other Books By Susanna Lane

Stand-Alone Books

Sorted First to Last

Lasting Promise

Series: The Promises

Sorted First to Last

Imperfect Promise

Enduring Promise

Lawless Frontier

On the lawless frontier of the late 19th century, Fort Smith, Arkansas, was the last stop before Indian Territory—a land crawling with outlaws, fugitives, and desperate men who thought the badge held no power. They were all wrong.
Judge Isaac C. Parker, the legendary “Hanging Judge,” was appointed to bring order to the most violent criminal jurisdiction in America—and he needed enforcers willing to ride straight into hell. The Deputy U.S. Marshals who answered that call became legends—men like Bass Reeves, Heck Thomas, and countless others whose names have been lost to history. Armed with a badge, a fast horse, and unshakable determination, they tracked murderers, thieves, and desperados across 74,000 miles of untamed wilderness.
Award-winning author and historian Velda Brotherton brings their stories to life in Lawless Frontier, an essential tribute to the men and women who rode for the judge—and for justice—in the wildest reaches of America. The book features a foreword by New York Times bestselling author and retired Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Marc Cameron, offering unique perspective from one of the modern West’s most respected lawmen.

Land of the Blind

When justice is blind, vengeance sees clearly.
Marion Tullos hunts men—the kind who traffic in flesh, steal innocence, and leave devastation in their wake. She brings them to justice or delivers judgment. The choice is theirs.
Marion and her battle-scarred uncle, Lummy Tullos, follow a trail of terror carved deep across the Western landscape. Every town, every saloon, every shadowed road brings them closer to a single name whispered with dread: The Buyer. Ruthless and untouchable, he is the one-eyed man who has made himself king in a land of the blind.
Once a victim herself, Marion knows all too well the cost of letting evil go unchallenged. But vengeance is only part of the fight. Every mile tests her courage, every confrontation threatens to drag her into darkness, and every choice could cost her the one thing she has never allowed herself…. hope.
Fast, fierce, and relentless, Will Rogers Medallion-winning author Anthony Wood delivers an unflinching story of one woman’s quest to strike down those who prey on the innocent. In a world that has lost its sight, Marion Tullos is the reckoning.

They Came for Blood

When the past comes for blood, you either draw first or die trying.
Tom Callahan was once the government’s deadliest secret—a lethal gun-for-hire leading a team of assassins no one knew existed. Now those days are long gone. Or so he thought.
Now an aging cowboy trying to keep his ranch alive, Callahan wants nothing more than peace… and a sliver of forgiveness. But when word reaches him that his wife and son—long believed dead—may still be alive, that peace turns to dust.
From railroad corruption to a secret slave trade, outlaw towns to Washington’s back rooms, every mile drags Callahan deeper into the rot of the nation he once served. Hunted, framed, and haunted by the men he used to ride with, he’s forced to become the one thing he swore he’d never be again—a killer.
In a world built on blood, there’s no clean way out. To save his family, Callahan will have to face the ghosts of his past—and decide if redemption is worth the price in bodies.
New York Times bestselling author M. William Phelps delivers a brutal, timely, and cinematic Western thriller where the trail to the truth runs red and redemption rides a pale horse.

Roan & Weatherford