A Nation divided... Two families face tragedy and an uncertain future as tensions rise in the years approaching the American Civil War. This is the story of the building of a legacy in the Texas wilderness... a legacy built on a foundation forged from Faith and Love. The town of Granbury, Texas has twice been voted America's best historic small town. This is the story of its beginnings- told through the stories of two of its founding families. Jesse Nutt and Elizabeth Landers had been married less than a year when he and his brother Jacob are blinded in horrific incident spawned by the turmoil that swept our Nation in the tumultuous years prior to the war that threatened to sever the ties that bound the United States into one Union. In the aftermath of this personal tragedy, the young people and their families struggle to find a way forward as their world crumbles around them. Determined to make a life for themselves and those they love, the two families form an alliance founded in their strong faith in God and the future of the Nation they love, and travel westward to the Texas wilderness as pioneers. They settle in a new land fed by the waters of a great river named by the Spanish explorers El Rio de los Brazos de Dios, the River of the Arms of God, hoping to find both a future and a refuge "Safe in the Arms of God".

A seventh generation Texan, Melinda Jo Ray is a retired librarian and educator, who has long enjoyed sharing her life-long love of history and the real people who inhabit it with others. She has now added freelance writer and local historian to her list of occupations, and frequently writes articles for local publications and visits various groups as a speaker on local history and its connection to the American story and our present-day lives. For fourteen years she was also the owner and operator of the Historic Nutt Hotel on the downtown Granbury square, a business established by the families whose story is found in these pages. It is still offering a safe haven and hospitality to others after almost 130 years.