And You Thought YOU Had it Bad

I haven't read a Grace Livingston Hill book in quite a while - but I finally got around to starting one that Keira loaned me this summer. I almost forgot how inadvertently funny she is.

The title of the book is "Beloved Stranger". It starts out with our heroine dumping her fiance on their wedding day because he was kissing another girl. Sherrill (heroine) is feeling depressed the next day when she hears one of the maids (Lutie) singing a song:

"When I have sorrow in my heart,

What can take it away?

Only Jesus in-ah my heart

Can take that sorrow away."

There are 3 more verses...but I won't write them here. I shall now quote from the book:

"But you've never had any sorrow, Lutie," said Sherrill wistfully, eyeing the girl's round rosy cheeks and happy eyes.

Oh, Miss Sherrill, you don't know," said Lutie sobering suddenly. "I've had just a lot! First my mother got awful sick for two whole years, and then when she got better my sister just older'n I died. And my little brother has hurt his hip and they don't think he'll ever walk again....."My dad got some steel filings in his eye about nine months ago, and they think he's going blind, and now they've laid him off the job so my brother Sam and I are the only ones working, except Mother now and then when she can get a washing to do. And our house is all mortgaged up and the bank closed last week where we had our money saved to pay the interest and now we'll maybe lose the house; and Mother needs an operation only she can't stop working to go to the hospital. And - "....and- then - my boy friend got mad and started going with another girl because I wouldn't run off and get married and leave the family in all that mess!"

I love how Lutie gets through everything until the part where her boy friend dumps her, before she breaks down. The only thing missing is having a beloved family pet die. I don't have to finish the book to know that Sherrill will go to Bible class with Lutie and be "born again", then she will end up marrying the stranger (remember, the title) that helped her through the whole wedding debacle - oh, and he will also be born again, if he hasn't been already.

Beloved Stranger was written in 1933