Patterns of Love won the 1999 RITA award for best inspirational romance. It features Swedish immigrant Inga Linberg, a pastor's daughter who becomes a housekeeper for Iowa rancher Dirk Bridger. Dirk has never married, but the sudden and tragic deaths of his brother and sister-in-law compel him back to the family farm to care for his ailing mother and two young nieces.

Inga falls in love with Dirk, and he offers a proposal of marriage -- but he is only acting out of duty to his family, and it is to be a marriage of convenience only. What he really wants is adventure, and it is his intention to someday dissolve the marriage and set out in search of it. Can Inga accept this kind of arrangement with the man she loves? Will Dirk find love and satisfaction in his marriage to Inga?