A fast and pleasurable read with plenty of local color and enough sentiment to evoke a tear or two. Although this...
Evans’ third novel in a series (Miles to Go, 2011, etc.) about a troubled man who must learn to forgive.
Alan Christoffersen is well into his walk from Seattle to Key West. He’s a widower who still grieves. Friends had cheated him out of home and business, so he up and walked away from it all. Maybe at the farthest point on the map he will find grace in his heart. Along the way, a series of interesting people test his character and help illuminate his soul. His mother-in-law, Pamela, is the first of them as she tracks him down along the road and begs to talk. Alan refuses, but she will not be denied. Although well told and moving, this part of the plot tests credulity. Pamela had abandoned her young daughter McKale, who years later married Alan. Now Alan is so bitter at her treatment of McKale, he won’t give Pamela five minutes to talk. Really? Maybe earlier books make this premise easier to buy. Anyway, this is at the core of the story. Who needs forgiveness more: the offender or the offended? If Alan can forgive, perhaps he can shuck his burden and find grace along his path. In one small town, a lonely woman comes to him in the night and begs for his love. Perhaps no other scene in the book better shows his character. Although the book is not specifically religious, Alan clearly shows his spirituality and cares deeply about who he is.
A fast and pleasurable read with plenty of local color and enough sentiment to evoke a tear or two. Although this installment can stand on its own, a reader’s best bet is to begin with the earlier books.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2818-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
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