About the Book

Book: An Unexpected Catch

Author: Abbey Downey

Genre: Christian Historical Romance

Release date: November 19, 2024

Can she count on the pitcher to save her dream, or will his secret destroy their futures?

Bea Curran has forged a career as an umpire in Chicago’s semi-professional baseball league, and now she’s ready to move toward her dream of leading the women’s athletic department at Western College. With her reputation on the line, the last thing she needs is a romance with a player known for his womanizing ways. But when her women’s baseball team desperately needs help, she can’t ignore the one man who could save them.

Emmett Worland, a talented new pitcher in the Chicago City League, has been keeping a painful secret that could end his baseball career for good. While he tries to hide his worsening illness, Emmett agrees to help coach Bea’s struggling team in hopes that it will be a step toward redeeming a bad reputation he didn’t earn.

Bea and Emmett’s undeniable attraction deepens the more time they spend together, but with so much at stake, can they afford to let their hearts lead the way? Or will the shadows of the past and the uncertainties of the future destroy their chance at a happily ever after?

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About the Author

Abbey Downeystarted writing inspirational romance stories during naptime when her kids were babies and found she couldn’t stop. She previously published two books with Love Inspired Historical under the pen name Mollie Campbell. She also works with Spark Flash Fiction producing a quarterly digital magazine that contains love stories under 1000 words.

A life-long Midwestern girl, Abbey lives in central Indiana with her husband, two kids, and one rather enthusiastic beagle. She loves watching her kids play sports and fixing up a 1900 farmhouse with her husband.

More from Abbey

From the first record of it in the late 1700s, the game of baseball grew in popularity—and eccentricity—for decades. There have been plenty of larger-than-life characters and wild tales in the sport, but in my research for An Unexpected Catch, I was most drawn to the stories of those baseball legends many people haven’t heard of.

One of those was the inspiration for the heroine of my story. Amanda Clement became the first female umpire in baseball when she began refereeing games in a semi-professional league—at only sixteen years old! Amanda was a wildly talented athlete in her own right and was known to stand up to the rough men who played baseball in the early twentieth century without hesitation.

Like Amanda, my heroine, Bea Curran, built her career as an umpire in a man’s sport through determination and skill. She knows how to stand up for herself on the field or in other sports, but as she leaves baseball to pursue a different dream, she has to learn how to navigate new pressures to conform to the expectations those in authority place on her.

One of the hardest parts of the research I did for this book was related to the players. Lots of old baseball tales are fun and harmless enough. But then there are too many stories like “Gentleman” George Decker, a Chicago first baseman who was hit in the head by a pitch in 1897. He was denied time off to recover and was hit again not long after. His mental state declined quickly, leading to delusions and threatening behavior. He was institutionalized several times before dying in an asylum in 1909.

Decker was far from the only player to suffer from intense mental and physical health issues after a head injury. Today, we would recognize these players’ symptoms as the result of concussions. But in the early 1900s and before, little was known about brain injuries from blows to the head. These men suffered in silence while being told they were crazy, and many were either arrested or placed in asylums, torn from their loved ones instead of treated.

In An Unexpected Catch, pitcher Emmett Worland feels like baseball is all he has. When he’s forced to face the likely loss of his career thanks to post-concussion syndrome (as we call it now), he has to figure out if anything else could possibly make his life worthwhile if he can’t play. Just like many of us, he wrestles with his purpose when the path he thought he would take is irrevocably disrupted.

Thankfully, there are plenty of wonderful moments in this story to remind the characters (and us) that God blesses us even in struggles. Along with all the fun vintage baseball and historical details, readers will follow Bea and Emmett as they grow in their faith, find their way through changing circumstances, and fall in love with the person they least expected.

Happy reading!

Abbey