In “Captain Matrimony,” Andy Phillips is a high school calculus teacher in North Carolina. He thinks his job is secure until one fateful day when the school burns down. Most of us lose our jobs through less dramatic circumstances, but not Andy. Literally, his job goes up in smoke, leaving him to wonder what he’ll do next.
His bishop is concerned about him and makes him an offer. The bishop’s brother lives in a tiny town called Mishap, Utah. They need a teacher, Andy needs a job – a match made in Heaven, right? What’s even better – the good citizens of Mishap have agreed to pay off Andy’s student loans. He’ll come out of the deal debt free.
He doesn’t think he has anything to lose, and so he heads off to the wilds of Utah, to find himself smack dab in the middle of the strangest town he’s ever seen. No one in town will get married. Seems that years ago, newlyweds Larry and Tillie Cutler took off for their honeymoon in a private plane and disappeared off the map, and now the town is cursed. Anyone who gets married in the town will come to an untimely end, and no one is willing to look that theory in the face.
Andy thinks it’s a bunch of bunk, but then gets another surprise. His course of study for the year: marriage. That’s right. He gets to teach the young people of Mishap how to meet the right person, court, and eventually get married. He might as well be teaching them to walk under ladders and pet black cats, for all the good it does him.
The only way to break the superstition that holds this town hostage is to solve the mystery of the Cutler’s disappearance, and so that’s what Andy decides to do. With the help of Summer, a beautiful young lady who keeps him tongue-tied, he sets out to discover what really happened, and ends up uncovering a much larger mystery than he had intended.
A book of goofy and unexpected proportions, you’ll get a good laugh out of this one.
(This book was published in 2001 by Deseret Book.)