A gripping, ultimately uplifting story about the power of Christian forgiveness.
Pascuzzi offers a taut debut thriller that opens on a tense note of mystery.
Tony Turner and his wife, Emily, are on a well-deserved vacation in Italy when ominous messages start arriving from their home in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Tony is the levelheaded, responsible owner of a chain of Steve’s Sporting Goods stores in northern Ohio; one of his store managers is his younger brother Danny, who was a wayward ne’er-do-well while growing up in Tony’s shadow (“Danny was always finding one way or another to screw up his life, from bad financial decisions to marital problems to a less-than-exemplary work ethic”). But since Danny married Rachel and had two boys, he’s seemed more grounded. He leaves Tony a phone message, relating how he just had to fire a problematic employee and that he’s afraid that the man could be dangerous; in a later email message, a worried-sounding Danny gives Tony his life insurance information and asks Tony to take care of his sons. From these initial hints, and with steady, skillful control of his narrative, Pascuzzi effectively unfolds a tale of tragedy: Rachel and son Evan are found shot dead in their suburban home, and Danny is soon discovered dead of a self-administered gunshot wound in the ravine at a quarry. The author shows how the catastrophe rocks the surviving family members to their cores and also shakes the faith that Tony and his loved ones have always used to carry them through the rough parts of their lives. The question arises: “If God cares enough to help someone who’s grieving, why didn’t he stop Danny?” Tony and Emily have their nephew to care for, and they have questions nobody can answer, so Pascuzzi smoothly uses the bulk of the narrative to examine the consolations of religious belief in times of crisis (“Yes, we all experience darkness. But yet, we are given faith. We’re given hope”). Throughout the book, his characters are believably textured, and he dramatizes a trial of faith that feels refreshingly grounded in the real world.
A gripping, ultimately uplifting story about the power of Christian forgiveness.Pub Date: March 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-615-98299-1
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Hope Messenger, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Old wounds are healed and new loves found on Starbridge Close in this, the final novel in the bestselling sextet (Glittering Images, 1987, Mystical Paths, 1992, et al.), which, like its predecessors, transforms the private lives of English high churchmen into an absorbing novel of intrigue and mysteries, divine and temporal. In a nice symmetrical touch, the narrator is again Dr. Charles Ashworth, whose adventures began the series. Now in his 80s, Ashworth, prompted by the obituary of old nemesis Neville Aysgarth, recalls the events of ``the year of my third catastrophe.'' That year is 1965, and Ashworth is a bishop ``famous for defending tradition at a time when all traditions were under attack.'' Such rigid adherence to absolute truths is asking for trouble, and sure enough trouble is soon on its way. An elderly homosexual vicar is found beaten up; to avoid scandal, Ashworth hides the old man's porn collection from the police; son Michael threatens to marry a most unsuitable girl; Aysgarth is being suspiciously cagey about the Cathedral fund-raising accounts; and Lyle, Ashworth's beloved wife, suddenly dies. As Ashworth responds to these crises, grief and the knowledge that he had not helped Lyle when she needed it makes him behave erratically. He sleeps with a widow, drinks too much, quarrels with his sons and Aysgarth. He has a terrifying encounter in the Cathedral, which convinces him it is possessed by demons. But spiritual peace and new love—an old flame from the past turns up—only come to the bishop when charismatic Lewis Hall conducts a dramatic exorcism that reveals the Cathedral's demons to be Ashworth's long-suppressed guilt, and when aging mystic Jon Darrow elicits confessions from both Aysgarth and Ashworth. A superb climax to a sequence that has triumphantly vindicated that ill-assorted gang of four—plot, prayer, perfidy, and priests. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41206-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
Japanese writer Endo (The Final Martyrs, 1994, etc.) continues his exploration of faith and anomie—in a deceptively simple and well-told story of spiritual inquiry that movingly explores all the big questions. The opening pages briefly introduce four people who will shortly, for varying reasons, join a Japanese tour-group travelling to India: Isobe, a businessman whose deceased wife, believing she would ``be reborn somewhere in this world,'' made him promise he would look for her; Mitsuko, a volunteer at the dead woman's hospital, who is troubled by her own past and her obsession with a former classmate; retired industrialist Kiguchi, still haunted by wartime memories of Burma's notorious Highway of Death; and Numanda, a gentle writer of children's books who wants to repay his debt to the bird that saved his life when he was desperately ill. The book investigates the role religion plays in contemporary Japan, where relatives attending a funeral politely question the Buddhist priest conducting the service, while ``not one of them really believed anything the priest was saying.'' As the trip gets under way, more disquiets are explored: Isobe can't forget how he ignored his wife when she was alive; Mitsuko hungers for love but can't abandon her cynicism; Kiguchi recalls a fellow veteran who saved his life by eating human flesh but then drank himself to death trying to forget what he had done; and Numanda muses on the central role nature has played in his life. The four finally experience their epiphanies on the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, where the old and afflicted come to die and the faithful immerse themselves in the river. In this richly detailed setting, Endo offers a faith that, using the river as metaphor, comfortingly blends all the great religions together. Conflicts a bit too neatly resolved, but saved from mawkishness by strong and original characters.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8112-1289-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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