THE PASSION OF REVEREND NASH

With tortured, unflinching clarity, second-novelist Basch (Degrees of Love, 1998) charts the redemptive downfall of a small-town reverend.

Jordanna Nash, 43, has taken up her calling at Hutchinson Congregational Church in Connecticut, following the ousting of the adulterous former minister. Jordanna is unorthodox in many ways, from her jewelry to her “dangerously tall” stature, but not in her unshakable faith. Her sermons are mostly inspirational, and on the surface all seems well. Yet the disappearance and apparent suicide of the depressed June Nearing, whom Jordanna had been helping, sparks controversy. An opportunistic reporter, questioning the validity of spiritual counseling as an alternative to academically verified therapy, gets the town talking. Jordanna, a vivid and intelligent Job-figure, is soon tested to her limits. Her resentful sister Abby is of no real comfort (Abby’s familial dialogues are the only real slowdowns in the narrative), and June’s relatives have consulted with an attorney, causing rumors of a lawsuit. Meanwhile, Tara Sears, a juvenile member of the congregation and its Senior Pilgrim Fellowship, is pregnant and wants an abortion. Jordanna is constantly reminded of the deaths of her own two children, both stillborn, and she’s plagued by back problems that act up during moments of extreme crisis, symbolically detailing her progressive loss of faith. Her professorial husband, Daniel, returns from an Auckland dig with his new graduate-student girlfriend in tow, wanting a divorce. God seems to have abandoned Jordanna. She seeks moral support from her longtime spiritual mentor Chip, who has a stroke at her feet. Such plagues could easily seem contrived, but Basch rarely takes the easy way out. When the church’s aptly named Prudential Board, sort of God’s p.r. group, decides to oust Jordanna, using her divorce as precedent, she’s placed in her final compromising position. Will she run or fight? In the end, her choices have to do mainly with human empathy and sacrifice.

A compelling, smart, no-holds-barred story committed equally to verisimilitude and compassion.