Book excerpt: Romance is in the air for Maggie Blaine Smith's daughters when Sergeant Patrick McCoy (daughter Frankie Blaine's beau) and Captain Philip Frost (daughter Lydia Blaine Lape's friend) make a surprise visit to Blaineton, New Jersey on their way to their new posts at Mower General Hospital, Philadelphia. Maggie struggles as she realizes that her daughters are becoming women. Eighteen-year-old Frankie will marry Patrick eventually. That much is obvious. But when? Maggie hopes and prays it will not for a while yet. Meanwhile, her husband Eli Smith is on a campaign to protect his stepdaughter's chastity, something both Frankie and Patrick find annoying. Neither parent, though, has any concerns about Lydia. She is the sensible one, the one who never does anything impulsively. In addition, she is an adult - nearly twenty-two years of age - and still in mourning for her late husband, Edgar Lape. Nothing to see here. Or is there?A visit Philadelphia and its Great Central Fair of 1864 just might change things for everyone.