Available for Kindle, paperback and audiobook.

ABOUT

The Accidental Marriage will appeal to anyone who has successfully navigated the first years of marriage as well as those folks who have floundered. The story is set in the early 1970’s, an interesting decade when gender roles were shifting. The groom in this tale is very traditional; the bride is not. After a tumultuous courtship, the main character, finds herself teaching at a junior high, learning to keep house in a miniscule apartment, and living with a young man who doesn’t know any more about being married than she does. Intimacy, cooking, laundry, lesson plans, and a tug-of-war with a possessive mother-in-law prove to be more new experiences than Nina can successfully manage.

At work, Nina is plagued by sexual harassment, a term not yet coined, which twists the plot and drives Nina to deception. She’s caught between the social crosscurrents of the burgeoning women’s movement and her young husband’s refusal to compromise his rigid expectations; consequently, the young marriage teeters on the brink of failure.

Quote from author: “Combining the problem of starter marriages (which last only a year or two) and the 1964 Civil Rights Legislation might seem like a stretch, but women moving into the workplace in the 1970’s strained marriages and poked and prodded society’s concept of the roles of men and women. I’ve tackled serious issues in this novel, but young love and new marriages are inherently comic, and I have to admit, writing this story was a lot of fun.”

PRAISE

“Finally, an LDS Romance for the thinking woman. The Accidental Marriage has it all; a reliable plot, witty dialogue, young love, and comical circumstances, but it also contains a serious exploration of what it takes to keep love going once the honeymoon is over. The characters are multifaceted, and I found myself simultaneously cheering them on while also wanted to shake some sense into them.

The great thing about this book other than Haws’s entertaining writing, is that even though it is set during the social movements of the 1970’s, the theme of trying to find your place in the world is universal, especially for women. Nina, like most women, is expected to be domestic and career savvy, accommodating and independent, wholesome and worldly, all at the same time. I appreciate that Haws was willing to address these issues, but also that she does it in a way that makes us laugh at ourselves and the impossible oxymorons required of our culture.” - Kim, Good Reads

MEDIA