Was it a mistake to leave Winkler? Was it a mistake to leave him, or were those years apart meant to be?

In her decades of happiness with her second husband, May Rose often wishes she’d married him the first time he’d asked. But maybe those 15 years spent apart were necessary, she tells her granddaughter, when Paula asks about those missing years.

This is the story of that time.

Angry and ashamed, May Rose runs away from the disasters of her life in the sawmill town of Winkler, West Virginia, to go to the assistance of her orphaned cousins in the distant, unknown city of Fargo, North Dakota. Fortunately, she does not have to travel alone. Wanda, her stepdaughter and closest friend, is going too.

Fargo is the largest town they’ve seen, full of opportunities, immigrants and other newcomers seeking to build a life. But work for women is the same everywhere: low status with low pay, and May Rose has no idea how she’ll support herself and her cousins. Her cousins, however, are full of surprises, and so is Wanda.

The Years We Missed is a story of starting over, then starting over again. It’s Book 14 in the Mountain Women Series, bringing to life the struggles and triumphs, friendships and families of women in a small West Virginia town in the early 1900s.