“Mateer’s turn-of-the-century story is full of characters who will touch your heart.”–RT Book ReviewsLula Bowman has finally achieved her dream: a teaching position and a scholarship to continue her college education in mathematics. But then a shocking phone call from her sister, Jewel, changes everything.With a heavy heart, Lula returns to her Oklahoma hometown to do right by her sister, but … Oklahoma hometown to do right by her sister, but the only teaching job available in Dunn is combination music instructor/basketball coach. Lula doesn’t even consider those real subjects!
Determined to prove herself, Lula commits to covering the job for the rest of the school year. Reluctantly, she turns to the boys’ coach, Chet, to learn the newfangled game of basketball. Chet is handsome and single, but Lula has no plans to fall for a local boy. She’s returning to college and her scholarship as soon as she gets Jewel back on her feet.
However, the more time she spends around Jewel’s family, the girls’ basketball team, music classes, and Chet, the more Lula comes to realize what she’s given up in her single-minded pursuit of degree after degree. God is working on her heart, and her future is starting to look a lot different than she’d expected.
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I love sorting through my to-be-read list of books and discovering new authors I haven’t read yet. It’s even better when I read a new-to-me author whose back list of novels I now want to binge read. Playing by Heart reeled me in slowly yet had me feeling so much empathy for what these various characters were going through on the World War One …
Silent films with fast-moving, cheerful characters; phonographs; and old cars pass through my mind when I think of PLAYING BY HEART. Anne Mateer has given us a treasure to enjoy in this novel.
Set during WWI in a small Oklahoma town, PLAYING BY HEART, tells us the stories of Lula and Chet. Ordinary individuals who each gave their dreams to God in …
Public library copy. So excited to read this! Anne Mateer is one of my favorite authors.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Playing by Heart. What an inspiring story. I gave it four stars because it lacks the depth which I have come to love in a book. Depth of character and layers which give the story staying power. Layers in description of scene, …