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In prose incandescent and artful, Elizabeth Strout draws readers into the details of ordinary life in a way that makes it extraordinary.
Random House
March 2006
304 pages ISBN: 1400062071 Hardcover
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Contemporary
In her luminous and long-awaited new novel, bestselling
author Elizabeth Strout welcomes readers back to the
archetypal, lovely landscape of northern New England, where
the events of her first novel, Amy and Isabelle,
unfolded. In the late 1950s, in the small town of West
Annett, Maine, a minister struggles to regain his calling,
his family, and his happiness in the wake of profound loss.
At the same time, the community he has served so
charismatically must come to terms with its own strengths
and failings--faith and hypocrisy, loyalty and abandonment--
when a dark secret is revealed. Tyler Caskey has come to love West Annett, "just up the
road" from where he was born. The short, brilliant summers
and the sharp, piercing winters fill him with awe--as does
his congregation, full of good people who seek his guidance
and listen earnestly as he preaches. But after suffering a
terrible loss, Tyler finds it hard to return to himself as
he once was. He hasn’t had The Feeling--that God is all
around him, in the beauty of the world--for quite some
time. He struggles to find the right words in his sermons
and in his conversations with those facing crises of their
own, and to bring his five-year-old daughter, Katherine,
out of the silence she has observed in the wake of the
family’s tragedy. A congregation that had once been patient and kind during
Tyler’s grief now questions his leadership and propriety.
In the kitchens, classrooms, offices, and stores of the
village, anger and gossip have started to swirl. And in
Tyler’s darkest hour, a startling discovery will test his
congregation’s humanity--and his own will to endure the
kinds of trials that sooner or later test us all. In prose incandescent and artful, Elizabeth Strout draws
readers into the details of ordinary life in a way that
makes it extraordinary. All is considered--life, love, God,
and community--within these pages, and all is made new by
this writer’s boundless compassion and graceful prose.
Comments
1 comment posted.
Re: Abide With Me
Delighted with KITTY ELDRIGE every small town must have one or two around.I see parts of her in myself, my sisters, the neighbors, even my mother. see what you think! (Carol Petrunyak 11:07pm May 29, 2009)
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