CALLING ON THE MATCHMAKER - Jody Hedlund - One Free Book
Bio: Jody Hedlund is the bestselling author of more than thirtyhistorical novels for both adults and teens and is the winner of numerousawards, including the Christy, Carol, and Christian Book Awards. Jody lives inMichigan with her husband, busy family, and five spoiled cats.From the talentedpen of bestselling author Jody Hedlund comes a brand-new series set amidst thebustling streets of St. Louis, Missouri, the gateway to the West. Beloved forher western historicals, readers are sure to fall for the Shanahan siblings asthey discover their places in life and love—even in spite of themselves—withthe help of a wily Irish matchmaker. Escape to 1849 St. Louis for a daring andromantic tale in Calling on the Matchmaker, book one in the A Shanahan Match series.
About the Story: Haunted by thedeath of her sister, Finola Shanahan has resolved that she’s not worthy of afamily of her own and commits to spending her days caring for immigrants in theslums.
Unwilling toconsider marriage, Finola has perfected the ability to sabotage therelationships her parents arrange for her. At wit’s end, her father calls uponthe local Irish matchmaker, who pairs her with successful wagonmaker RileyRafferty. After her usual tricks fail, Finola quickly realizes she can’toutsmart or outwit the dashing, determined, and daring man.
A candidate in theSt. Louis mayoral election, Riley is confident a union with the wealthyShanahan family will help solidify his chances of winning—and even more assuredhe and Finola can make a difference together. When a cholera outbreak begins totake St. Louis by storm, they must navigate a burgeoning attraction and growingdanger, testing all they know about love and sacrifice.
Your latest novel, Calling on the Matchmaker, is book one in the new series, A Shanahan Match. Can you please tell us a little bit about the series?
Jody Hedlund: This new series is a saga involving the Shanahan family in thefrontier city of St. Louis, Missouri, in the late 1840s. The Shanahans are abig and loving family with six children. The oldest are reaching marriageableage, so the local matchmaker is called upon to help form advantageous matches.Even though the Irish matchmaker is wily, he still faces challenges as he seeksto pair each of the Shanahan siblings with their true loves.
Since the series revolves around the Shanahansiblings, can you provide a short introduction to each sibling? Book 1 in the series involves Finola Shanahan, who is the oldestShanahan sibling and the first in line for the matchmaker’s help. The troubleis that she has no intention of getting married and works to foil thematchmaker’s plans.
Book 2 tells Enya Shanahan’s story. She is a fiery redhead with anequally fiery personality and is rebellious against her strict parents. As aresult, she gets herself into trouble and ends up needing a marriage ofconvenience.
Book 3 finally gives Kiernan Shanahan a chance to find his true love.As the first-born son, he’s driven in life, business, and love. He’s ready forthe matchmaker to find him an advantageous match, but his heart may havealready found someone else.
What do readers need to know about the Shanahan family, butespecially about Finola? Finola’s parents both immigrated from Ireland as young adults. As aresult of their Irish heritage, they have strong ties to the large Irishcommunity in St. Louis and also have a heart for helping the newly arrivedIrish immigrants, many of whom are escaping starvation and poverty in Irelanddue to the potato famine. Finola, in particular, has become involved with agroup of nuns who visit the poor tenements and help the immigrants. She desiresto join the convent and spend her life in service to God. But her parents areopposed to her entering the convent and want her to get married.
Some major themes that Callingon the Matchmaker addresses are family relationships, mistakes, and forgiveness.How do we see these play out in the lives of your female protagonists? Finola is wrestling with a past family tragedy that she hasn’t beenable to forget about or forgive herself for. As a result, she feels as thoughshe has to do penance for the mistake. One way she feels she can make up forthe tragedy is by becoming a nun and living a life of service to God. She hastried to talk to her parents about her desire to enter the convent, but theyhaven’t listened to her. As a result, she doesn’t communicate well about whatshe wants. Throughout the course of the story, she has to learn to gain a voiceas well as learn to forgive herself and others for the past.
This novel is arguably a bit different from other books you’vewritten recently. Can you share what inspired the idea for this story? It is a little different. But I hope readers appreciate getting tolearn about new areas of the country and new parts of history through mystories. Since I love romance more than anything else, I thought the matchmakeridea would be a fun way to tie a series together. As I began researchingmatchmaker stories, I realized that there is a long tradition of Irish menbeing matchmakers. So, the Irish matchmaker takes the stage in all of thebooks.
Which character in this book was your favorite to write and why? Doyou think this will be readers’ favorite as well? Obviously I love the hero and heroine! But aside from them, BellamyMcKenna, the matchmaker, is one of my favorite characters in this series. He isin the process of beginning to take over the matchmaker duties from his fatherand has some different, less conventional ways of bringing about matches. He’s notonly intuitive, but he’s also very clever. Readers will hopefully fall in lovewith Bellamy (and maybe, just maybe, he’ll get his love story eventually too!).Your previous series, Colorado Cowboys, highlighted cowboys in the American West. What prompted you to headin a different direction for this series? Asmuch as I loved writing my Colorado Cowboys series, Ididn’t want to pigeon-hole myself as a western or cowboy-romance writer. Sincemost of my series highlight different places and historical events, I wanted totake readers on a new adventure and introduce them to a new part of historythat I haven’t yet explored.
Why set these books in St. Louis? Does it have special meaning to thestory? Knowing I wanted to use the Irish, Iresearched places that had large Irish populations in the 1800s, and St. Louiswas one of them. As the Gateway to the West, St. Louis was full of danger,disease, and disaster—all of the things that make for a great story and theperfect setting for the Shanahan family.
In particular, I chose the year 1849 as the starting point for thisseries because a number of tragedies occurred in St. Louis at that time,including a deadly cholera epidemic and a tragic fire along the riverfront.
What is one of your favorite things about writing historical fiction?I love finding and bringing little known erasof history to life for readers. It’s always fun to hear from readers how muchthey’ve learned from my books and how that aspect of history came to life forthem.
What lessons do you hope readers gain by picking up Calling on theMatchmaker? Ihope readers will learn, just like my characters, that sometimes we mistake ourown inability to forgive ourselves as God’s inability, but instead God forgivesus so deeply, that He puts our mistakes out of His mind as far as the east isfrom the west. If God forgives us so generously, shouldn’t we also be willingto forgive ourselves the same way?
Can you share whichShanahan sibling the next book in the series is about? The next book isEnya’s story and involves a marriage of convenience, a steamboat captain, andthe Great Fire of 1849.
That soundsinteresting, too. How can readers connect with you? To stay up todate, I invite readers to join my Facebook ReaderRoomwhere I post the most relevant book news and interact with readers. Or readerscan visit my website at jodyhedlund.com
Thank you forsharing Calling on the Matchmaker with us today. I know my readers will want to read it.
Readers, here’s alink to the book.
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