A beautiful ex-felon who’s had her fill of men. A crotchety old ranch hand who loved and lost. A lonely rancher facing a difficult summer.Kate Neilson leaves a Pennsylvania penitentiary and heads for The Whispering Pines Guest Ranch in Wyoming. Although she’s determined to be a good citizen and support herself with her newly acquired marketing skills, other forces are just as intent on dragging her back into the pit. Can Kate withstand those who oppose her—and learn to love again?Cyrus Moore, a longtime Whispering Pines ranch hand, has lost the women he once loved, including his daughter, who left for the university and never returned home. When he learns the WP owner, Laura Duncan, offered an internship to a university graduate who looks like his daughter, he vows to put the young woman in her place.Since his father’s death, Mike Duncan’s only desire has been to help his mother keep their guest ranch running smoothly. But lately, despite the work that occupies most of his waking hours, and despite the longtime friends and neighbors who surround him, loneliness plucks his heartstrings like a lost melody.Winds of Hope is the prequel to the Kate Neilson contemporary romantic suspense novels set on a picturesque guest ranch nestled in Wyoming’s Sierra Madre Mountains. If you like engaging characters, vivid locations and high-octane action, you’ll love Winds of Hope and the other Kate Neilson stories that follow—Winds of Wyoming, Winds of Freedom and Winds of Change.