We want to shape things, mold things, have a pattern, a purpose and a plan. But life interferes.

Then it is the unexpected visitor, the unguarded moment that does the molding and shaping.

Black-and-white photographs from the Lowcountry and around the globe capture this message in a new book with a devotional narrative.

The photographer died at age 85 just as the book went to press in February. But his wife, who selected the narratives, pushes on to expose "The Unexpected Visitor." She will be signing books from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Bay Street Trading Co. in Beaufort.

Indeed, the book from Charleston's Joggling Board Press flows from many unexpected twists.

Photographer Naseeb Bashara "N.B." Baroody Jr. was an unexpected South Carolinian. His father immigrated from Lebanon, walking the East Coast selling candy before settling in Florence to found his own candy company, followed by a produce wholesaling company and a drink company.

Baroody was an unexpected photographer. He was a cardiologist with a passion for mission work in the Middle East, and for the needy at home in Florence, where he co-founded a free clinic called Mercy Medicine Clinic. But as a child he was fascinated by a Kodak Baby Brownie, and as an adult he studied with Ansel Adams.

N.B. and Margaret Hinson Baroody were an unexpected couple. Both lost their spouses before blending two families by marrying 20 years ago.

Dr. Baroody was meticulous about the technical quality of photographs he laboriously set up with large cameras, a tripod and many lens choices. His wife's first criteria was what the image was saying.

The book's title photograph was one he never bothered to print because a bird stepped uninvited onto the stage he saw. He was on the sand at Tilghman Beach north of Myrtle Beach, trying to capture the contradiction between the elusiveness of the fog and the stability and symmetry of a long pier. It was a technical and timing challenge, ruined by the bird. Or so he thought, until Margaret urged him to print it much later. Only then did they see another unexpected visitor deeper in the mist. They saw at the end of the pier something that looks like a cross.

Margaret Baroody now sees the book as her husband's legacy, and she is beating the pavement to share it. You can tell it was done by two Sunday school teachers, with its many scriptures and thoughts on grace and the important truths they discovered in life.

Peering back through carefully selected words and shadowy images of a beach, a palmetto tree or Egyptian widows with a little girl is this truth: Always welcome the unexpected visitor.

Purchase The Unexpected Visitor