An engaging story about a clergyman’s crisis of conscience.
In Treat’s (Our Stories of Experience, Strength & Hope, 2005) novel, a small-town pastor confronts a mystery surrounding the death of a member of his congregation.
Pastor Brian Matterson leads a small community of the faithful at All Saints Lutheran Church in Martin Valley, a suburb of Minneapolis. As the story commences, Brian, a recovering alcoholic with a dogged sense of duty, is trying to handle various everyday challenges with good humor when tragedy strikes: A member of his congregation, Candy Vinter, has hanged herself in her family home. She’d been dealing with breast cancer and the effects of chemotherapy, but even so, the chance that she might commit suicide had never crossed Brian’s mind. When he visits the family—her husband, Mickey, and their children—he senses something secret underneath the surface of their grief. After police investigate further, Brian finds himself confronting conflicting sets of priorities; meanwhile, he continues to juggle his ordinary responsibilities, including other family tragedies. Treat, a Lutheran pastor himself, portrays Brian’s world with three-dimensional texture so that even the daily details of life at All Saints become surprisingly gripping reading. For example, at the story’s outset, Brian faces the normal array of headaches that face any pastor, including a young couple seeking marriage counseling, and a leaking roof that the church can ill afford to repair since All Saints’ revenues have been declining along with the membership. Throughout, the author imbues his protagonist with a thoroughly believable humanity; at one point, for instance, he’s privately annoyed by his imperious secretary: “There were plenty of times Brian fantasized about ways to move her out of the job or get her to retire, but that was a political hot potato that could end up in a church schism if it went sideways. Truth be told, he would be lost without her.”
An engaging story about a clergyman’s crisis of conscience.Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5434-7905-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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