Goodreads asked Lindsay McKenna:

Who is your favorite fictional couple, and why?

Lindsay McKenna I loved writing Wind River Rancher, Book 2 of my Wind River Valley series by Kensington Books. It's about Reese Lockhart, an ex-Marine captain who used to manage a company in Afghanistan. Eventually PTSD got to him and he was given a honorable medical discharge. After leaving the Marines, he fell into the dark world of trying to put his life back together again. He's a man of high morals, values and integrity. His fall from being successful to disheveled has taken a toll emotionally on him. But he keeps fighting and that is what makes him such a wonderful, sympathetic character.

Shay Crawford owns the Bar C in Wind River, Wyoming. She too is a military vet, also plagued with PTSD, and is fighting to make her ranch a healing place for vets like herself. Anyone she hires, has PTSD in some form. Her life has never been easy, losing her mother when she was a child. Her father, Ray Crawford, is an alcoholic and abusive. He denigrates women and her, regularly. He has a stroke at 45, which hauls Shay out of her happy place in the Marine Corps, forcing her to come back to the ranch and take care of it. The Bar C under Ray's drunken state, has deteriorated terribly and Shay comes home to her family ranch that is in jeopardy of being lost to the local bank.

These two characters are heroic despite what Life has thrown at them. I always admire people who struggle on, doing the best they can. And while it's not perfect, they still try. I find that one of the most admirable traits a human can have. And that is why Shay and Reese are my favorite fictional couple.

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