Book Description
Evensong - 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.
