English teacher Whitney Shoemaker previously read “The Stolen Marriage” by Diane Chamberlain.

“It focused on race relations,” Shoemaker said. “It had a bunch to do with family, but it really focuses on interracial marriage.”

This period piece is set in the 1940s in North Carolina during the polio epidemic. It focuses on a nurse that ends her engagement with the man she loves as well as her career to marry the father of the baby she is carrying. This is when she finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage.

“It was really good,” Shoemaker said. “I had no idea going into it, and I was really impressed with it.”

Diane Chamberlain is a New York Times Best Selling author known for her adult fiction books. Her books are often considered historical fiction since she tends to heavily research and write. Some of her other books include “Necessary Lies” and “The Last House on the Street.”

“If you like reading, especially pieces that are kind of like historical literature, it’s really good,” Shoemaker said. “You see the different thoughts of people in the ‘40s about race relations.”

The theme and or message of this book has a lot to do with how people saw different races than their own in the ‘40s. It also has to do with how you love who you love and how you cannot force a relationship with someone if it is not there.