A love of reading romance books challenged Janet Dailey to try her hand at writing one of her own. In 1974, she boldly sent out an American West story to London-based Harlequin and made history. The well-known Mills & Boon publisher, who provided all books to Harlequin at that time, had never signed on an American author before. They didn’t have a category for western romance or the type of self-determined female main characters unbound by rigid societal expectations.