Excerpt from Winter Sisters by Robin Oliveira, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

David O'Donnell accompanied Bonnie to her shop at 59 State Street, as he did every morning. His pride at her success was exceeded only by his pride in his daughters, Emma and Claire, though if pressed, he might confess a partiality toward Emma, whose stubborn spiritedness he encouraged perhaps more than he ought. But the pressing thing now was the snow drifting lightly from the skies, and the question of whether or not it had been advisable to have erected the new awning over the mullioned shop window. Under too much accumulation of the white stuff, it would founder. But as they assessed the sky for clues, a patch of blue opened above the river, settling the issue. David kissed Bonnie's cheek, and taking his leave, descended the slippery sidewalk toward Broadway on his way to the Lumber District, where his work as a stevedore had shaped his strong body into an anvil.

"You'll not forget dinner tonight at the Sutters'?" Bonnie called after him.

"I mean the Stipps'!"

After twelve years, she still couldn't get it straight. Her beloved adopted family had grown. No one in the city of Albany knew whether to call them the Sutters or the Stipps, either. The O'Donnells were generally believed to be their blood relations, though that was not true, even as much as Bonnie wished it were.

"And if you stop for a pint on the way home," she threatened, "don't bother to come calling. I'll bolt the door against you."

Turning, David raised his arm in salute, a teasing grin skittering across his weathered face. "Dinner?" he said. "What dinner?"

"David O'Donnell, it's your fault, you know, that Emma is such a scrapper."

But Bonnie stood under her green-striped awning and admired the man as he sauntered away. David was her second husband. Her first husband, Jake Miles, had disappeared in the War of the Rebellion, and none too glad had she been to see him gone. For a brief time, she'd been in love with Christian Sutter, Amelia's only son, but he had died early in the war. And then David had spotted her on the street one day, and made a pest of himself until she fell in love with him. He had given her Emma and Claire, whom she cherished. She crossed herself to honor the two children she'd had with Jake. They had died as infants, a sadness from her unlucky past. And she made a last cross to honor Elizabeth Fall: Amelia Sutter's grandchild, whom she loved just as much as she loved her own daughters, and whom she missed, for the brilliant girl had gone with her grandmother far away to Paris to study violin at the conservatory there. Bonnie was worried about her. Lately, Elizabeth's letters had confided great sadness.

"Six o'clock! Remember!" Bonnie called after her husband.

After turning and waving, David cut down Montgomery and dashed across the tangle of railroad tracks at Spencer, then followed Water Street into the Lumber District, crossing the narrow lock bridge that separated the terminus of the Erie Canal from the port basin. A sudden, sharp gust of wind chilled the two thousand laborers pouring into the fifty lumberyards on the hundred-acre island, carved between the Erie Canal and the Hudson. David worked for Gerritt Van der Veer, the preeminent lumber baron in the city. Gerritt S. Van der Veer, it could be said, ruled Albany. Advertisements for his white pine shone down from nearly every brick building lining the grand commercial boulevards of Western Avenue and State Street. the best white pine in the world is at van der veer & son lumber! While Van der Veer was a fair employer, his temper could rage when things went wrong.

This year, an unanticipated excess inventory of milled white pine had wintered over, and Van der Veer wanted to ship it the minute the frozen river opened to navigation, which he believed would be soon. His overseer, James Harley, a more reasonable man, nonetheless shouted over the rising gusts to the assembled hundred laborers of Van der Veer Lumber that this morning's first task was to clear the accumulating snow from the stacks. So David and the other longshoremen climbed the towers of plywood and joists and four-by-fours and got to work.

Excerpted from Winter Sisters by Robin Oliveira. Copyright © 2018 by Robin Oliveira. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.