A Great Catch
1901. Lake Manawa, Iowa. In the beautiful little lakeside resort, summer has arrived along with favorites such as roller-skating, picnicking, baseball games, and speeches by the suffragists. Enter 22-year-old suffragist Emily Graham, whose plan is to educate the women of Lake Manawa to their equal status as men and their voting rights. In her private life, Emily tries to live her life independently, free from her meddling aunts who love to chaperone her dates. Suddenly, in a roller-skating incident, Emily collides with Carter Stockton, a recent college graduate and pitcher for the Manawa Owls baseball team. Although Emily is attracted to Carter, she prefers to pursue her main goals of spreading the message of suffragists and arranging a baseball game between the Bloomer Girls All-Women baseball team and the All-Men Manawa Owls, on whose side she must play. Carter professes his love to Emily, but she believes a vicious story circulating about him, and this love affair takes many twists and turns.
Seilstad provides a continual flow of entertainment and humor as she takes the reader back to the turn of the 20th century in small-town Iowa. She adds a spiritual bent to the story in framing Emily’s and Carter’s growth through their relationship with God. This is an endearing book, best read on a hot summer day with a pitcher of lemonade.
