#ThrowbackThursday: Discerning God's Best series by Heidi Gray McGill

Hello and Welcome to this special edition of Throwback Thursday! Our featured guest, Heidi Gray McGill is sharing her Discerning God's Best series of Christian fiction books.

I'm going to let Heidi take over and tell us all about this series and how it came about...

When my world shifted—first through vision loss from retinitis pigmentosa, then through the sudden closing of the ESL program I founded and directed—I lost the platform I had used to share Christ. The ministry I loved was gone, my daily rhythms were upended, and I couldn’t see what God was doing next.

But God did.

In the quiet, He gave me stories. Stories of resilient women and steadfast men in the 1800s who, much like us today, faced detours they didn’t choose and seasons they didn’t understand. Each character wrestled with questions I knew well: Can I trust God’s timing? Does He truly see me? Is His plan still good when mine has fallen apart?

Those stories became my Discerning God’s Best series.

Before a single stranger became family, one couple chose obedience over comfort. Everything that followed built on that choice.

The Discerning God's Best series spans nearly three decades, from a candlelit Nativity in South Carolina to the wild edges of the Missouri frontier. Twelve stories. One growing family. One unrelenting truth: wounded hearts arrive as strangers and leave as family.

• Before We Belong (Christmas 1851, South Carolina): Mary and Melvin learned, one candlelit Christmas Eve, that belonging began with knowing whom they served long before it meant knowing each other. FREE on my website.

• Deep in My Heart (Prequel): Melvin gave up his inheritance, and Mary gave up nearly everything she loved to leave South Carolina and head to the wilds of Missouri. The detour that reshaped their journey west became the biggest adventure of their marriage. - FREE on my website.

• Desire of My Heart (1858): No matter how dark her night became, Rachel trusted God's promise of joy in the morning and found it in a widower's marriage of convenience and the found family she gained by his side. Available @ Amazon in eBook, Paperback & Audio.

• With All My Heart (1860): Singing Bird learned that accepting love after rejection was a journey all its own, and Pete's patience through her exile became the second chance neither had dared to ask for. Available @ Amazon in eBook, Paperback & Audio.

• Stitched on My Heart (1860): Fleeing slavery, Delphina discovered a path of boundless hope in a land of unrelenting hardship, and a freedman named Moses became the protector, and the family, she never thought she'd earn. Available @ Amazon in eBook, Paperback & Audio.

• Where Hearts Belong (1865): Snowed in by fate, Juan and Essie discovered where they truly belonged, and the forced proximity of one blizzard taught two opposites that home could be found in a single storm. 

***This bonus story is exclusive in the Bundle One Collection Available @ Amazon. Find out more about this collection HERE. AND check out the YouTube Exclusive Audio book!

• Matters of the Heart (1866-1867): Katie learned that overcoming her obstacles and finding her true self didn't mean going it alone, even though the answer she sought arrived in a war-weary soldier she never expected to need. Available @ Amazon in eBook, Paperback & Audio.

• Healing of the Heart (1871-1873): Teddy feared depending on anyone, and Thomas feared letting her carry the burden alone, until his quiet persistence proved some walls were built to come down. Available @ Amazon in eBook & Paperback.

• Written on My Heart (1873-1874): Betsy found it hard to hear God's voice when she'd already decided what she wanted Him to say, and waiting on His timing meant trusting the childhood friend wrestling free of his own past. Available @ Amazon in eBook & Paperback.

• A Place to Belong (Christmas novella): Josephine thought she'd run out of grace until grace found her on the edge of a snowy town, offered by a wounded veteran whose marriage of convenience became the safety she'd stopped believing in. Available @ Amazon in eBook, & Paperback.

• Keeper of My Heart (1877): Cecelia had never met a man who could keep up, and Jimmy had never met a challenge he couldn't solve, until a smallpox outbreak forced two stubborn hearts to risk trusting God and each other. Available @ Amazon in eBook & Paperback.

• Vision of My Heart (1878): Serafina lost her sight to smallpox, but God was never blind to her future, and a steady horseman named Connor taught her that eyes were never the only way to see. Available @ Amazon.

All books are FREE in Kindle Unlimited (KU) and KU is FREE to eligible Prime Members!

For readers who love the words of Lauraine Snelling, Misty M. Beller, Lacy Williams, Linda Ford, Naomi Rawlings, Shanna Hatfield, Lynn Austin, Robin Lee Hatcher, Karen Witemeyer, Liz Tolsma, and Jody Hedlund, this series delivers everything you come back for. Clean, faith-forward romance. Frontier grit. Characters who feel like neighbors. A God who is never as absent as He seems.

Heidi Gray McGill is a Selah Award finalist and five-time NEST Award-winning author of Christian historical and contemporary fiction. Her Discerning God’s Best series has earned over 3,500 five-star reviews on Amazon, where readers describe her work as “faith-filled fiction with flawed but lovable characters.” She began her writing journey in March 2020, after retirement, proving that God’s calling has no expiration date.

A sought-after encourager in the writing community, Heidi speaks and writes on the craft of storytelling, writing with biblical conviction, and reaching readers across generational and cultural divides. She is both independently and traditionally published, and she writes despite progressive vision loss, which has only sharpened her perspective on what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.

Connect with Heidi and receive a free prequel to her bestselling series at HeidiGrayMcGill.com.

Christian Fiction. Relatable Characters. Life-changing Stories. Fusing Faith and Fiction™