THE FULLNESS OF TIME

In Altier’s novel, a real estate magnate has a life-changing awakening.

At the beginning of Altier’s debut novel, 48-year-old “nationally renowned real estate magnate” Lukas Kincaid leaves a celebration of his firm’s latest financial conquest feeling like a master of the universe. But a car accident renders him badly injured and comatose in the hospital, tended to by his long-suffering mother and his beautiful, heartless wife Vivian (“She could kill you with kindness on the one hand while stabbing you in the back with the other,” readers are told. “It was said behind her back that she had no soul”). Although Kincaid had been baptized at 12 and briefly considered becoming a minister, his worldly success slowly damaged his moral compass: “Although he started out his career playing by the rules, he learned quickly that to win, he couldn’t always let ethics get in the way of closing the deal.” A supernatural messenger visits Kincaid while he’s comatose and articulates what, on some level, the real estate agent already knew before his accident: “You drifted away from the Lord. You stopped going to church, you put your Bible away to collect dust, and stopped giving to causes that help others in Jesus’ name.” When Kincaid revives, he may be ready for an entirely new set of priorities. While Altier tackles his predictable story architecture using plain, occasionally plodding prose, he manages his hero’s trajectory with great zeal, carving out the daunting nature of the personal challenges facing Kincaid when he returns to his life. Christian readers will appreciate the author’s strategy of weaving faith inspiration into the unfolding melodrama of Kincaid’s circumstances. “Often,” we’re told, “walking with God is not easy, and ministering to others necessarily involves you in their pain and suffering.”

An energetic but unsurprising story about a midlife reckoning.