Evensong by Gail Godwin

Amazon.com
In the tight-knit Smoky Mountain town of High Balsam, several weeks before the new millennium, Margaret Bonner finds herself pondering the notion of marriage. "I was mystified anew by this whole thing we humans do when we take it into our heads to love one particular person," she muses. At 33, she is the first woman pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church, and her husband, Adrian, is the headmaster of a progressive high school. The Bonners are in a marital slump--Adrian's self-loathing exasperates his younger, more passionate wife and she can't resist imagining what life would be like without him. Yet as the end of the century approaches, they are forced to turn their attention outward and respond to the escalating needs of their North Carolina community. The appearance of three colorful misfits brings matters to a head. Grace Munger, an aggressive fundamentalist Christian, is on a crusade to organize a "Millennium Birthday March for Jesus"; Brother Tony, a chatty 80-year-old itinerant who's taken up the life of a Benedictine monk, has a particular interest in Adrian; and Chase, a 16-year-old delinquent, harbors a thirst for liquor, with calamitous consequences. In her sequel to Father Melancholy's Daughter, Gail Godwin expertly traces the contours of faith, compassion, and loyalty in an isolated community on the brink of change.

Book Description
To read Gail Godwin is to touch the very core of human experience. With inimitable grace and aching emotional precision, this New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award nominee probes our own complexities in characters whose lives oscillate between success and struggle, stoic resolve and quixotic temptation, bitter disappointment and small, sacred joy. Now, in her first novel since The Good Husband, Godwin again translates our everyday existence into soul-touching truths as she brings to brilliantly realized life the people of a small Smoky Mountain town--and a woman whose world is indelibly altered by them.

At the advent of the new millennium, the residents of High Balsam are in desperate need of hope. Economic and social unrest has led to tragedy. For Margaret Bonner, the young pastor of High Balsam's Episcopal church, care of the community is her constant challenge and devotion.

But now, into Margaret's well-ordered life, come three strangers--a firebrand female evangelist with a haunted past; an elderly, itinerant man whose visit to this quiet hamlet may be no accident; and a troubled boy who Margaret's husband, headmaster of a progressive, local school, is determined to save. Soon these explosive personalities will ignite a conflagration in Margaret's marriage and in the depths of her very soul.

Raising profound issues of love, commitment, and the ever-changing landscape of family, Evensong is both graceful and gripping in its story of a marriage struggling to sustain the best of itself in a volatile world. With this engrossing new novel, one of our most gifted and accomplished storytellers gives us an unforgettable portrait of an American town at the century's end--and of the unexpected events that forever shape our lives.

 

About the Author
Gail Godwin was born in Alabama, grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and received her doctorate in English from the University of Iowa. She has taught at Vassar College and Columbia University and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1981 Award in Literature from the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Her short stories, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. Three of her critically acclaimed novels, The Odd Woman, Violet Clay, and A Mother and Two Daughters, were nominated for the National Book Award. Her other highly praised books include The Good Husband, Glass People, The Perfectionists, Dream Children, and Mr. Bedford and the Muses.

 

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