In her first pub­lished book, Joanne Sun­dell takes us back to mid-19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, telling a sto­ry about the strug­gle to sur­vive and find romance while fac­ing cul­tur­al and reli­gious prej­u­dices. Zoe-Esther Zun­dele­vich and her father, Yitzchak, new immi­grants from Rus­sia, trav­el from Philadel­phia to the Col­orado Ter­ri­to­ry, hop­ing that the dry weath­er out West will cure Yitzchak’s tuber­cu­lo­sis. Hav­ing just grad­u­at­ed from med­ical school, Zoe-Esther defies gen­der and reli­gious stereo­types and attempts to set up a life in the Wild West. There she meets Jake, an own­er of a local saloon who drinks, gam­bles, and most prob­lem­at­ic for Zoe-Esther, is not Jew­ish. She knows that he can­not be her besh­ert; in addi­tion to not being Jew­ish, Jake was not the name giv­en to her by the match­mak­er of her even­tu­al match. 

Match­mak­er, Match­mak­er pro­vides an enjoy­able plot, while expos­ing the read­er to the hard­ships and prej­u­dices expe­ri­enced by Jew­ish immi­grants over a hun­dred years ago. Embed­ded with­in the cul­tur­al nar­ra­tive is a sto­ry of an intrigu­ing, for­bid­den romance. Sun­dell is care­ful to pro­vide Eng­lish trans­la­tions and expla­na­tions for all Yid­dish, Hebrew, and Jew­ish ref­er­ences, enabling read­ers of all back­grounds to ful­ly com­pre­hend the story.