A Good and Decent Man: Trials, Tragedies, and Triumphs of Two Families Seeking to Walk with God
By Donald E. Hall (·¡»å¶Ù’78)
(Amazon, 276 pages; 2021)
This is a Christian romance novel rich in the history and culture of the first half of the twentieth century. The hero, Raleigh Curtiss, served in France during WW I and kept up a correspondence with a girl back home, Rachel Parker, whom he loved from the day he met her. Rachel's father, Harold, business owner and aspiring politician, has big plans — college and medical school — for his talented and vivacious daughter, and they definitely do not include farmer-mechanic Raleigh Curtiss. Parker forbids Raleigh from visiting Rachel at her home. When Rachel goes off to college, Raleigh visits her often. Rachel, wanting to please her father, doesn't let Raleigh get serious. The story becomes clouded with uncertainty when Rachel allows a romantically aggressive medical doctor to propose marriage. This development pleases Harold Parker although the doctor scorns Rachel's Christian faith and is, in fact, an agnostic. What Rachel doesn't know is, Raleigh loves her, and what she admits to herself, she has loved Raleigh since meeting him before he went off to war. Rachel discovers that Raleigh is a good and decent man. But she is trapped in a two-jawed trap. Her father's expectations and her engagement to a doctor who always gets what he wants. How can she extricate from this trap and follow her heart? Raleigh has a plan and urges Rachel to go out to dinner with him — just one more time for "old time's sake." Reluctantly, Rachel agrees and ends up surprised and almost out of the trap.