A Most Unsuitable Match by Stephanie Grace Whitson

Stephanie Grace Whitson guest blogged on Infinite Characters a couple of weeks ago, and many of you enjoyed her time here as she talked about quilts and history. Last night I finished a book written by Stephanie. If you haven’t read A Most Unsuitable Match yet, I recommend that you do.

Fannie Rousseau loses both mother and father then discovers the family business is suffering financially, and it would appear her life-long home is falling into disrepair. If not for Hannah, an older woman who works for her family, she’d be lost. Hannah had been more a mother to her than her own mother. When Fannie cleans out some of her mother’s things, she finds evidence of an aunt, her mother’s twin sister, she’d never heard of. Thus begins her quest to find this last living relative.

On board ship, Fannie meets and becomes friends with Samuel Beck, a young man searching for his runaway sister. After suffering shipwreck and the loss of Hannah, Fannie goes on with Samuel and his friend.

During this quest to find lost family, Fannie and Samuel fall in love, but each determines he or she is unsuitable for the other. Fannie turns to a doctor whose son is blind. Samuel believes God has prepared Fannie for the doctor because her best friend back home was also blind.

A Most Unsuitable Match is a story of blending unlikely people into what could be considered a large family who help each other, rejoice together, and share tears and sorrow. It’s a story of finding one’s self and learning what God has in store. Trusting what God wants to do in your life. The time period comes through with Stephanie’s descriptions. There is a twist at the end that takes Fannie totally unaware, and of course, I wouldn’t dream of divulging that here.

One parting remark I find amazing, but so like our Lord. Stephanie comments in her note to the reader that her books aren’t always about the things she thinks they are. She says, late in the book she learned that the “most unsuitable match” she wrote about was really (I’m quoting now.) “the fact that we often don’t see ourselves as suitable to do or be what God seems to want us to do and be. I’ve been reminded that as we offer ourselves up to him, he can make us suitable.” How true that is, Stephanie!

You can find A Most Unsuitable Match at most bookstores and online bookstores. I think you’ll enjoy reading it. I did.