Redeeming Love

Redeeming Love is a 1991 historical romance by the American author Francine Rivers, published by Bantam Books. It is set in the gold fields of California in 1850 and follows Angel, who was sold into prostitution as a child and has organised her survival around expecting nothing from anyone.

Michael Hosea is a farmer who believes he has been directed to marry her, and the middle of the book is the slow work of that arrangement. Angel is married to a man who asks nothing in return, and the novel tracks her attempts to keep her distance while the terms of her life change around her, including the fear that arrives with the first sign of softening.

The story is a retelling of the biblical book of Hosea, with a husband told to marry a woman who has been used and discarded and who keeps going back to what she knows. Gold-rush California supplies the economics of the setting: sudden money, a town built around extraction, and a woman with almost no legal or social protection once she is no longer wanted.