Readers of the first four volumes will enjoy this conclusion. Others who are interested should read these feel-good books in...
The fifth volume in the Walk series brings it to a pedestrian close.
Followers of the series know that Alan Christoffersen is walking across America to mend his broken heart after his wife’s death. Starting in Seattle, his goal is Key West. When he reaches Jacksonville, Florida, news arrives of a dire family emergency, so he flies home to deal with it. Afterward, he returns to his walk, during which he mulls over the meaning of life and occasionally trades wisdom with strangers. One of them says Christoffersen is “like most of humanity, looking for something that’s ultimately not worth finding.” But Christoffersen disagrees. He's looking for hope. This last leg of his journey is about 500 miles of straight line, which pretty much describes the plot. Every day he walks 20 miles, give or take a few, and every day he says what he eats and whom he meets. Fine. This is a journal, after all. But there are no surprises, mysteries, twists, setbacks or disasters except for the one beginning the tale. He deeply misses his wife, of course, and is now in love with a woman he’s never kissed and who's engaged to marry another man. Meanwhile, he claims to be “not wired for celibacy,” yet he calmly rebuffs the advances of two lusty sirens in a bar without even reporting a tingle below the belt. From his journal entries, Christoffersen appears to be a man without fault. No, he doesn’t compare himself to Jesus, but the metaphor is clear. After a rain, he realizes he's “walking on water,” but it’s no Sea of Galilee. Anyone can walk on water this shallow.
Readers of the first four volumes will enjoy this conclusion. Others who are interested should read these feel-good books in sequence, starting with The Walk.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2831-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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