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. --Rebecca Robinson


From Publishers Weekly
Godwin's latest novel is as comforting and evocative as its title. It's striking, at a time when so many books on spirituality are flooding the market, that so few novelists of skill and perceptiveness seem drawn to religion as a subject. Susan Howatch is one, of course, but Godwin has surely scored some kind of first in making her heroine here a female Anglican minister. Margaret Bonner, whom Godwin admirers will remember as the subject of Father Melancholy's Daughter, is now the pastor at All Saints High Balsam, a parish set in a conservative little resort community high in the Smokies in Western North Carolina. She married the much older Adrian Bonner, who is struggling as headmaster of a local boys' school, and who is apparently still daunted by thoughts of Margaret's youthful fling with Ben MacGruder, now a noted pop singer. Into their lives, as they approach the millennium (the book is set a year from now, at Advent 1999) comes Tony, a strange old man with dyed hair who represents himself as a monk on the move; Grace Munger, a local woman with a grim past who has set up as an evangelical revivalist and seeks Margaret's participation in an end-time parade to bring salvation and healing to the mountains; and Chase Zorn, a bright but self-destructive orphaned youngster who is a student at Adrian's school. Among a welter of conflicting emotions and loyalties, Margaret somehow keeps her sanity, even her serenity, intact, and learns to put together a long and loving life with a daughter born out of the sorrows of that strange and dramatic time. The carefully researched details of a woman minister's daily rituals are fascinating, and Godwin offers her usual insights into her characters' shifting feelings, compounded of psychological astuteness and keen empathy. Gracefully written and embracing a worldly but genuine sense of goodness and human possibility, this kind of book is rare these days. 75,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
There's not much hope and the poor are getting poorer in the small town of High Balsam?which makes things hard for Margaret Bonner, pastor of the local Episcopal church. But then three strangers come to town, and her life really gets complicated.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Claire Messud
Meticulousness and precision are ... Godwin's greatest strengths.


From Kirkus Reviews
In a satisfying sequel to Father Melancholy's Daughter (1990), Godwin contemplates family ties, the prickly bonds of marriage, and the varieties of religious faith. Walter and Ruth Gower's daughter is now Margaret Bonner, 33, an Episcopal minister like her father, married to his former helpmeet Adrian Bonner. A friend accused Margaret of reproducing her dead parent's mistakes, and that's partly true: like Ruth, she has married a much older man subject to bad bouts of depression, in Adrian's case taking the form of maddening assertions of unworthiness. Margaret hasn't yet bolted as her mother did, but the Bonner marriage is not in good shape as Margaret's first-person account begins at the end of November 1999. The eve of the Third Millennium exacerbates tensions in High Balsam, a North Carolina town nestled in the Smoky Mountains where year-rounders resentment of the wealthy summer people has recently sparked some ugly incidents. Freelance fundamentalist Grace Munger proposes to heal these tensions with a Millennium Birthday March for Jesus, aggressively pursuing the reluctant Margarets support. Other new arrivals contributing to the storys complications are Tony, a lay Episcopalian brother who has closer links to the Bonners than he initially reveals; and Chase Zorn, a troubled teenager at the school where Adrian serves as chaplain. As usual with Godwin, all the characters are superbly drawn, particularly the irritating but lovable Adrian and ruthlessly manipulative Grace, who nonetheless arouses feelings of emotional kinship in Margaret. The young minister herself is a thoroughly engaging heroine whose struggles with spiritual and domestic commitment are convincingly and unpretentiously depicted. In Godwin's leisurely, nouveau-Victorian narrative, people are sometimes improbably quick to lay out their life-stories for strangers and astoundingly well-informed about their motives, but that suits the books reflective tone, as does the epilogue, which wraps up loose ends 20 years later. A solid piece of wo k from one of our most thoughtful popular novelists. Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

At the advent of the 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 whom 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Deirdre Donahue - USA Today

Evensong reawakened in these very weary eyeballs the joy of reading....Rich. Satisfying. Luscious....What makes this novel so engaging is its sense of a small world fully realized.

Entertainment Weekly

...[L]ush, ruminative....[grapples] with the relevance of spirituality in contemporary lives...

Paul Gray - Time Magazine

The author...has created a character who has enough flaws to satisfy contemporary skeptics but who also struggles convincingly with the old-fashioned task of being a good person.

Claire Messud

...[A] novel, set on the cusp of the millennium, in which our society's anxieties are played out in microcosm....[I]n spite of its infelicities and occasional straining for effect, Evensong lingers in the mind. —The New York Times Book Review

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - The New York Times

[A] rich new novel...with the narrative verve and moral gravity that made earlier novels of hers so appealing. Read all 15 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Fannie Flagg

I'm a huge fan of Gail Godwin. Her writing is flawless. I loved this book and its wonderful characters. — Author of Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

Connie May Fowler

n this exquisite novel Gail Godwin gracefully explores that many-facted mystery we call faith. Evensong illuminates what is most basic and good about humanity: our instinct to love, heal, and forgive. — Author of Before Women Had Wings

Jacquelyn Mitchard