Heidi Gray McGill Books in Order

Heidi Gray McGill writes Christian historical and contemporary fiction from near Charlotte, North Carolina. She lives with her husband of more than thirty years and often shares bits of family life, including two adult daughters, a son-in-love, and three energetic grandsons. Her voice, both on the page and off it, is warm, practical, and quietly funny.

She grew up in a pastor's home and knew the language of church early. Later, as a married woman and new mother, a friendship with a new Christian pushed her to look past habit and rules and think more deeply about faith as a real relationship. That personal shift still shapes her fiction, where belief is part of daily life rather than wallpaper.

Before publishing novels, McGill spent years founding and directing an ESL program. That work put her close to people learning new words, new places, and new ways to belong. It also left its mark on her stories, which often pay close attention to outsiders, people on the move, and characters trying to find home.

Writing was not her first career.

She began her writing journey in 2020 and moved fast. That same year she published her debut novel, Desire of My Heart, the first of her Shumard Oak Bend books. What followed was not a one-book experiment but a steady body of work built around linked characters, faith under pressure, and the long, messy road toward healing.

Much of her best-known fiction lives in that frontier world. Desire of My Heart follows Rachel, an orphan trying to protect her younger brother while reaching for family and safety. With All My Heart returns to Pete Manning and Singing Bird, mixing second chances with frontier danger and cultural tension. Matters of the Heart pairs Katie Murphy and Hans Korhonen in a story shaped by orphans, service, and recovery after war. Later books such as Healing of the Heart and Written on My Heart keep widening the circle, bringing in medicine, prejudice, belonging, and the pull between personal plans and God's timing.

She also likes to change lanes.

In her contemporary romances, McGill keeps the faith thread but moves into smaller, lighter setups. Dial E for Endearment centers on a radio host living with retinitis pigmentosa, while Dial P for Perfect takes on body image, self-worth, and humor in a shared radio-world series. A Deeper Love trades mountains and prairies for a tropical island setting, with scuba diving, emotional baggage, and a heroine who is used to people leaving.

Blindness is part of her story, but not the whole of it. McGill was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in 2001 and has written openly about being legally blind and using a white cane when she travels alone. She has said that naming that reality out loud took time. That honesty helps explain why her characters often face limits, grief, or fear without being reduced to them.

These days, when she is not writing, she talks about reading widely, walking, scrapbooking, cooking, traveling, and spending time outside with her grandsons. Her books return again and again to people who feel overlooked, displaced, or uncertain, then ask what grace, courage, and trust might look like in ordinary life. That mix of tenderness, resilience, and everyday faith is what keeps readers coming back.