THE PRODIGAL FATHER

A grieving Christian husband and father starts to lose his faith in God in Hutter’s novel.

As the story’s outset, widower Tom Davis is facing the most daunting task of his life: He must stand at a podium and give a speech about his son, Eli, a soldier who was recently killed in action. Adding to the incredible pain of the moment are Tom's memories of the loss of his wife, Emily; his long struggle with alcohol abuse; and his troubled, sometimes-abusive relationship with Eli and his daughter, Jess, while the kids were growing up. Now, in the present, Tom is “in a hole,” Hutter writes, “and all he wanted was to dig deeper into it and bury himself with the dirt.” However, as he faces the task of memorializing his dead son, he knows that he’s pulled himself up in the past with God’s help, but he’s also aware of the cost of his past behavior: ice-cold distance between himself and Jess and nagging doubts about how strong Eli’s religious faith had been when he died. “God, just do something,” he pleads. “Tell me something. Tell me You have my boy and he’s forever home.” Hutter’s novel is intensely Christian-focused, with many quoted passages from Scripture. Over the course of the book, the author does a smooth, skillful job of juggling the narrative’s many extended flashback sequences; gradually, in clear, forceful prose, readers see not only what Tom’s life was like before his family fell apart, but also, in the book’s most memorable passage, how Eli met his end on the battlefield. That said, there’s a good deal of overt sentimentality—a common feature of modern Christian redemption tales. Still, Hutter mostly offers an admirably restrained portrait of renewed faith.

An unflinching, sometimes-moving religious tale of the healing of a broken family.