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
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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