The Matsutake Hunters of Oakridge
A Pacific Northwest Romance

About this book:

In the mist-shrouded valleys of the Oregon Cascades, the matsutake season is a high-stakes gamble played out between rivals who know every ridge, every microclimate, and every secret the mountain keeps. Maya Lin needs one perfect harvest to save her family's apothecary; Sam Ryder needs to prove he's more than the timber legacy he abandoned. For five autumns they've circled each other across the damp needlecast of the Willamette National Forest—trading barbs at buying stations, racing the snow line, guarding their patches with knife-sharp precision. But when an early freeze threatens to bury the season's final bloom, the mountain forces a truce neither expected.

Forty-eight hours. That's what the dropping barometer allows before the high country seals shut. Forty-eight hours to navigate washed-out access roads, outmaneuver competing pickers, and read the forest's subtle language before the snow erases it all. As they trek deeper into the red fir shadows of Waldo Mountain, the rivalry that once burned clean and cold begins to shift—warming in shared campfire coffee, in the quiet respect of watching someone work land they love, in the dangerous vulnerability of admitting what you're willing to lose.

Atmospheric and tenderly observant, *The Matsutake Hunters of Oakridge* is a love story rooted in place: the scent of cinnamon and pine rising from damp duff, the weight of a full basket against your hip, the particular hush of a forest holding its breath before winter. For readers who crave romance built on competence, history, and the slow, sure recognition that the person you've fought all these years might be the only one who truly sees you.