Redeeming Love is a 1991 historical romance novel by Francine Rivers set in the 1850s Gold Rush in California.
The story is inspired by the Book of Hosea from the Bible, and its central theme is the redeeming love of God towards sinners.
A few years later, Mae dies from a terrible illness, leaving eight year-old Sarah alone with a drunken man named Rab.
The woman admits the pair and sends them to a bedroom upstairs where they are instructed to wait until her master can see them.
She disembarks in San Francisco with nothing more than the clothes she is wearing, and is taken in by 'The Duchess', the owner of The Palace, a brothel in Pair-a-Dice.
Still determined to heed God's command and marry Angel, Michael pays the high fee for her services in hopes of convincing her to leave with him, but she stubbornly rejects his offer.
After the last night with Angel, Michael grows frustrated and leaves Pair-A-Dice, but his obedience to God pushes him to return a few days later.
Michael nurses Angel back to health at his cabin, and she remains barely tolerant of the arrangement while it serves her needs.
Michael's widower brother-in-law, Paul, returns home from fruitless gold panning in the Sierras, and recognizes Angel immediately as the high-priced prostitute from the Palace.
When she finally heals from her wounds, Angel tries to run away from Michael in hopes of returning to the brothel to get back the money The Duchess had kept from her.
When Paul leaves to sell the produce of his land back in Pair-A-Dice, Angel sees this as a way for her to escape.
Upon her return to Pair-A-Dice, she sees that the Palace has burned down and that Lucky and another prostitute by the name of Mai Ling are dead.
A livid Michael finds her in a room with a client and fights their way out of the bar filled with drunken men waiting for their turn with Angel.
Angel begins to develop affectionate feelings towards Michael, which she cannot comprehend because she has never allowed herself to love any man because she still believes "God's truth."
On their return to the valley, they meet the Altman family, who have a broken wheel and are stranded on the side of the road.
Angel reveals to Mrs. Altman and her 16 year-old daughter Miriam that she met Michael in a brothel, and is amazed to find that they have only compassion for her instead of contempt.
They become close, and Angel takes a liking to Miriam, who begins to fancy Paul, who is living at the other end of the valley.
In the present, Angel reveals this to a devastated Michael, and tells him that she once had sex with her own father as revenge for abandoning her mother.
Angel is swamped by guilt over her callous behavior and at being unable to give Michael children of his own, as she knows he longs for.
However, Duke's sexual preference is for young girls, so he asks Angel to manage his prospective "companions," but only after a week's worth of prostitution.
However, he is met by the singing stranger from the crowd, who threatens to have Duke hanged if he lays a single finger on Angel.
Jonathan Axle, the man who saved her, is a wealthy and respected banker with a solid Christian family.
At first he acts cold, contemptuous, and sarcastic, but is startled by her humility and the genuine love she harbors for Michael.
When she discovers that Paul is married to Miriam, and that Michael is still waiting for her after three years of absence, her whole world falls apart and she no longer feels justified in staying in San Francisco.
She surprises him in the field where he is working, kneeling at his feet and crying, grieved to see the profound effect losing her had on him.
Francine Rivers had produced some earlier historical romances for a series of years before she became a born-again Christian in 1986, after an eight-year-old boy, who lived next door, invited her to church, where she changed.