Come Love A Stranger

Come Love A Stranger is a historical romance by the American writer Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, published by Avon Books in 1984. It is set in the American South and its plot turns on a case of lost memory.

Ashton Wingate runs a Mississippi plantation, and he has only just married Lierin when she is taken from him. Three years afterwards his carriage collides with a rider on horseback, and the woman who is brought into his house is the image of his lost wife. She cannot remember her name or her past, and two men lay claim to her: Ashton, who greets her with recognition and love, and the man whose earlier hold over her leaves her frightened rather than reassured.

Woodiwiss writes the book from the perspective of a woman recovering both her memory and her footing in a household she may or may not belong to, and the plantation, its work and its place on the river give the story its setting, which is unfamiliar to her in every detail.