COURTING EMMA, by Sharlene MacLaren

Reviewed by Marion Kelley Bullock

It’s 1893 in Little Hickman, Kentucky. Twenty-eight-year-old Emma Browning runs a boarding house full of hooligans—six, to be exact. She’s tough and stubborn. She doesn’t want help from anybody, least of all Preacher Jon Atkins. He sells his house, donates the proceeds for building a church, and moves into the boardinghouse. Emma fears he’ll try to hammer the gospel into her and her boarders. She wants nothing to do with God. She hangs on to a lifetime of bitterness toward her father, the town drunk.

Emma has begun receiving letters from a mysterious someone who knows about her and seems to know secrets about her father’s past. At the same time, she’s flattered and a bit discomfited to receive the attentions of both Jon and Billy Wonder, a suave traveling salesman. She tries to keep her mind off the handsome preacher. Jon finds Emma lovely and fascinating. But he wants to obey the still, small voice of God. He sets out to reach the unreachables. And right alongside that desire is his desperate wanting to court Emma.
Will Emma ever forgive her father? Will she find God’s perfect plan for her life?

Ms. MacLaren’s novel is sweet, but not syrupy. Real honest-to-goodness characters with genuine emotions people its pages. They live and breathe in my mind. I feel as if I might walk down Main Street and encounter some of them. Humor, romance, and mystery team with Christ’s love to make this reading experience one you won’t want to miss.