This is a very odd little book. It's very much an ugly ducking tale: 16-year-old Effie Martin, carefree tomboy who cares not a whit what other people think of her, overhears a scathing setdown of her entire being by a group of gossiping girls and is utterly devastated by it. All she wanted to do was join them for a drive and a picnic, and they talked about how awful she was at being a girl, and how poorly it would reflect on them if they dared let her join their little company.

Effie is a pretty awful person, utterly self-absorbed, but nobody wants to hear all of their faults picked apart by classmates. She vows to make herself over, head to toe, and goes about it pretty clumsily, all except for learning how to sew some flattering clothes. On the day of the ride/picnic, Effie heads out of town in the other direction, not even wanting to run into the girls who were disparaging her, and ends up saving a little boy's life when she finds him in a runaway, driverless carriage. And who should happen upon her but the glamorous Lawrence Earle, the very man all the other girls were so a-twitter about?

Earle is basically the first person who's ever been consistently kind to Effie in her life, and she positively glows in his presence. He tells her that the foundation of his happiness is his evangelical belief in God, and tells her that it can be the foundation for her happiness, too. There's much made of the meaning of her name - Euphemia - as "good report," and how she can make a good report of herself if she accepts Jesus as her lord and savior.

She does, and of course the ugly duckling that nobody wants transforms into the young woman that everyone envies. She manages to change her entire personality, losing all of her backbone and becoming as selfless as she had been selfish before. She only has a few days of Lawrence Earle's company (during which time he mostly preaches to her) before he's swept away under family obligations, and then a desire to be a missionary in India, but from that moment on she hero-worships him.

Five years pass as Effie transforms herself into the pretty, selfless, timid Euphemia. By the time Lawrence Earle returns to their hometown, he's amazed at how much everyone absolutely loves her now and has nothing but wonderful things to say about her.

And then the story ends, before he actually returns to his mother's house or sees Effie again. It's hinted that he's come home to be part of some Grand Project, but yeah. The story comes full circle, because as much as nobody wanted to invite her on a picnic at the beginning of the book, suddenly everyone wants Euphemia's company by the end. Otherwise, the story abruptly ends with a lot of loose threads still hanging about.

There is absolutely NO subtlety in this story. It's on par with Marcia Schuyler for how much it celebrates its heroine and badmouths her jealous, vain older sister. Maybe that's a GLH template?

There is no romance, beyond successive generations of girls cooing over Lawrence Earle, and all the unhappy marriages that the original set of girls make, due to their vanity and selfishness. There is a LOT of evangelical Christianity here, an almost cringy amount even for an "inspirational" novel. Definitely not a favorite.

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