From the talented
pen of bestselling author Jody Hedlund comes a brand-new series set amidst the
bustling streets of St. Louis, Missouri, the gateway to the West. Beloved for
her western historicals, readers are sure to fall for the Shanahan siblings as
they discover their places in life and love—even in spite of themselves—with
the help of a wily Irish matchmaker. Escape to 1849 St. Louis for a daring and
romantic tale in Calling on the Matchmaker, book one in the A Shanahan Match series.
About the Story: Haunted by the
death of her sister, Finola Shanahan has resolved that she’s not worthy of a
family of her own and commits to spending her days caring for immigrants in the
slums.
Unwilling to
consider marriage, Finola has perfected the ability to sabotage the
relationships her parents arrange for her. At wit’s end, her father calls upon
the local Irish matchmaker, who pairs her with successful wagonmaker Riley
Rafferty. After her usual tricks fail, Finola quickly realizes she can’t
outsmart or outwit the dashing, determined, and daring man.
A candidate in the
St. Louis mayoral election, Riley is confident a union with the wealthy
Shanahan family will help solidify his chances of winning—and even more assured
he and Finola can make a difference together. When a cholera outbreak begins to
take St. Louis by storm, they must navigate a burgeoning attraction and growing
danger, 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 the
frontier city of St. Louis, Missouri, in the late 1840s. The Shanahans are a
big and loving family with six children. The oldest are reaching marriageable
age, 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 seeks
to pair each of the Shanahan siblings with their true loves.
Since the series revolves around the Shanahan
siblings, can you provide a short introduction to each sibling? Book 1 in the series involves Finola Shanahan, who is the oldest
Shanahan sibling and the first in line for the matchmaker’s help. The trouble
is that she has no intention of getting married and works to foil the
matchmaker’s plans.
Book 2 tells Enya Shanahan’s story. She is a fiery redhead with an
equally fiery personality and is rebellious against her strict parents. As a
result, she gets herself into trouble and ends up needing a marriage of
convenience.
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 for
the matchmaker to find him an advantageous match, but his heart may have
already found someone else.
What do readers need to know about the Shanahan family, but
especially about Finola? Finola’s parents both immigrated from Ireland as young adults. As a
result of their Irish heritage, they have strong ties to the large Irish
community in St. Louis and also have a heart for helping the newly arrived
Irish immigrants, many of whom are escaping starvation and poverty in Ireland
due to the potato famine. Finola, in particular, has become involved with a
group of nuns who visit the poor tenements and help the immigrants. She desires
to join the convent and spend her life in service to God. But her parents are
opposed to her entering the convent and want her to get married.
Some major themes that Calling
on 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 been
able to forget about or forgive herself for. As a result, she feels as though
she has to do penance for the mistake. One way she feels she can make up for
the tragedy is by becoming a nun and living a life of service to God. She has
tried to talk to her parents about her desire to enter the convent, but they
haven’t listened to her. As a result, she doesn’t communicate well about what
she wants. Throughout the course of the story, she has to learn to gain a voice
as well as learn to forgive herself and others for the past.
This novel is arguably a bit different from other books you’ve
written recently. Can you share what inspired the idea for this story? It is a little different. But I hope readers appreciate getting to
learn about new areas of the country and new parts of history through my
stories. Since I love romance more than anything else, I thought the matchmaker
idea would be a fun way to tie a series together. As I began researching
matchmaker stories, I realized that there is a long tradition of Irish men
being matchmakers. So, the Irish matchmaker takes the stage in all of the
books.
Your previous series, Colorado Cowboys, highlighted cowboys in the American West. What prompted you to head
in a different direction for this series? As
much as I loved writing my Colorado Cowboys series, I
didn’t want to pigeon-hole myself as a western or cowboy-romance writer. Since
most of my series highlight different places and historical events, I wanted to
take readers on a new adventure and introduce them to a new part of history
that I haven’t yet explored.
Why set these books in St. Louis? Does it have special meaning to the
story? Knowing I wanted to use the Irish, I
researched places that had large Irish populations in the 1800s, and St. Louis
was 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 the
perfect setting for the Shanahan family.
In particular, I chose the year 1849 as the starting point for this
series 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 eras
of history to life for readers. It’s always fun to hear from readers how much
they’ve learned from my books and how that aspect of history came to life for
them.
What lessons do you hope readers gain by picking up Calling on the
Matchmaker? I
hope readers will learn, just like my characters, that sometimes we mistake our
own inability to forgive ourselves as God’s inability, but instead God forgives
us so deeply, that He puts our mistakes out of His mind as far as the east is
from the west. If God forgives us so generously, shouldn’t we also be willing
to forgive ourselves the same way?
Can you share which
Shanahan sibling the next book in the series is about? The next book is
Enya’s story and involves a marriage of convenience, a steamboat captain, and
the Great Fire of 1849.
That sounds
interesting, too. How can readers connect with you? To stay up to
date, I invite readers to join my Facebook Reader
Room
where I post the most relevant book news and interact with readers. Or readers
can visit my website at jodyhedlund.com
Thank you for
sharing Calling on the Matchmaker with us today. I know my readers will want to read it.
Readers, here’s a
link to the book.
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4 comments:
Jody Hedlund is an exceptional author.
Caryl K in Texas
Sounds like a great story. Cherie J. from Florida.
Captivating and memorable historical. Anne in NM.
I love Jody Hedlund’s books and would love to win. Brenda from Mississippi
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