About the Book

Book: The Songbird and the Surveyor

Author: Denise Farnsworth writing as Denise Weimer

Genre: Christian Historical Romance

Release Date: November 3, 2025

A marriage of protection. A past full of pain. In Georgia’s wild gold country, love might strike when it’s least expected.

Genevieve Gillbard knows she’s no longer safe in the rough-and-tumble gold rush town when she overhears her controlling guardian’s plot to steal gold from a local mine owner. It takes every ounce of her courage to escape, and now she’ll do anything to keep herself safe, even accept a temporary marriage of convenience from a man who clearly wants nothing more than his independence.

After losing his first wife, surveyor Jesse Holden swore never to let anyone close enough to need him again. But when he discovers the woman he knows as the Songbird of Auraria injured and unconscious in the woods, he can’t abandon her, not with the memory of his failure to protect his wife hanging over him. He’ll keep this woman safe until she’s out of harm’s way, even if it means doing the one thing he swore he’d never do again.

As Genny recovers under Jesse’s care, she discovers he’s nothing like the manipulative men of her past. But can she trust him with her heart—knowing he plans to leave as soon as her guardian is brought to justice? And even then, she fears the sham marriage might not be enough to keep her safe from her guardian’s long reach.

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My Thoughts

I liked reading this book. I found it to be well written. I liked Genny and Jesse. I found it interesting to learn about how the land was surveyed in preparation for the land lottery in Georgia after gold was found. I wanted to keep reading to see what was going to happen. I look forward to reading more books by Denise Weimer Farnsworth in the future.

About the Author

North Georgia native Denise Farnsworth has authored around twenty traditionally published novels and a number of novellas—historical and contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and time slip. As a freelance editor and Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books, she’s helped other authors reach their publishing dreams. A mother of two wonderful young adult daughters, Denise always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

More from Denise

A Gold Rush…in Georgia?

Celebrate Lit Blog Post for The Songbird and the Surveyor by Denise Farnsworth

(writing as Denise Weimer)

Did you know there was a gold rush in Georgia that began twenty years before gold was discovered in California? That Georgia gold was purer than any found in the country? Comment below if you did. And I tip my hat to you. I come across many native Georgians who are unaware of this major event in their state’s history.

My first series, The Georgia Gold Series, touched on the Georgia Gold Rush. In the ten years since its release, I’ve written novels set between the Revolutionary War and contemporary times. (I also recently got married. Thus, the name change from Denise Weimer to Denise Farnsworth. I hope you’ll look for my future novels under my new name!) The period of the 1830s is one largely untouched in American history by fiction writers. I always knew I might revisit that decade in more detail. Thus, The Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush was born.

Gold was first discovered by white men on Coker Creek in 1827, but it wasn’t until fall of 1828, when Benjamin Parks found a nugget as he returned from filling his cattle’s lick log west of the Chestatee River, that the mining industry exploded in North Georgia. The area was flooded by prospectors who clashed with the native Cherokee people. The land was soon taken from them and divvied up in a lottery of ninety-two districts, with farming plots set at a hundred and sixty acres and gold lots at forty acres. By June of 1832, almost six hundred surveyors from across Georgia were hard at work.

The gold belt stretched from Clarkesville to Canton (the setting of book two), with major concentrations near Dahlonega (the setting of book three). Auraria, located on the mountain ridge between the Etowah and Chestatee rivers, was one of the boom towns that lingered into the twentieth century, although now only a few abandoned buildings remain. Think Wild West before the west went wild. Into this setting I dropped the story of a guilt-haunted surveyor with a dangerous streak of wanderlust and an orphan who’s learned to sing for her life.

Genevieve Gillbard’s neglectful father has died and left her in the care of her guardian, a volatile saloon owner with unwholesome intentions. When she overhears a plot that implicates Charles Martin and one of his employees in a scheme to kidnap her and siphon off a local miner’s gold, Genevieve flees…right into the arms of another man she surely can’t trust.

Blaming himself for the death of his wife, Jesse Holden wants nothing less than being saddled with the wounded songbird he rescued from a drunken miner on his first trip to Auraria. But when he learns that Genny’s guardian is the same man responsible for his wife’s death, he agrees to shelter her to give his sheriff friend, also his former brother-in-law, time to entrap Charles. Neither of them expect to be forced into a marriage in name only—at least until Genny reaches her majority. Despite his efforts to hold his heart at bay, Jesse was raised by his minister-father to treat women right—something so new to Genny, it crumbles her walls. But will the emotional price of trusting Jesse prove higher than the risk to her physical safety?

Although set near raucous boom town of Auraria, The Songbird and the Surveyor is a story of quiet healing and second chances. Of rescues and God’s miraculous redirection. Of learning to spot the real among the counterfeit…and hold onto it for all you’re worth.