Read : Iron Heart Read : The Burning God Read : Tweet Cute Read : When We Were Vikings Read : The Life and Medieval Times of Kit Sweetly Read : Walk the Wire
The Dearly Beloved traces two married couples whose lives become entangled when the husbands become copastors at a famed New York city congregation in the 1960s.Charles and Lily James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differencesThe Dearly Beloved traces two married couples whose lives become entangled when the husbands become copastors at a famed New York city congregation in the 1960s.Charles and Lily James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences however threaten to tear them apart. Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry. How then can he fall in love with Lily—fiercely intellectual elegantly stern—after she tells him with certainty that she will never believe in God? And yet how can he not? James the youngest son in a hardscrabble Chicago family spent much of his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother. Nan grew up in Mississippi the devout and beloved daughter of a minister and a debutante. Jamess escape from his desperate circumstances leads him to Nan and despite his skepticism of hope in all its forms her gentle constant faith changes the course of his life. In The Dearly Beloved Cara wall reminds us of “the power of the novel in its simplest richest form: bearing intimate witness to human beings grappling with their faith and falling in love” (Entertainment Weekly A-) as we follow these two couples through decades of love and friendship jealousy and understanding forgiveness and commitment. Against the backdrop of turbulent changes facing the city and the churchs congregation Wall offers a poignant meditation on faith and reason marriage and children and the ways we find meaning in our lives. The Dearly Beloved is a gorgeous wise and provocative novel that is destined to become a classic.(less)