FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
From the bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars comes a darkly humorous contemporary novel of faith and redemption, focusing on an economically depressed community that suddenly becomes the center of hope for the despairing. After teenage runaway and itinerant mushroom picker Anne Holmes has a vision of the Virgin Mary in a nearby forest, her motley crew of friends and colleagues all respond in different ways, ranging from acceptance to utter disbelief. After word of her visions spreads, various miracle seekers gather on the site, throwing the local church and logging companies into a panic.

The author evokes real sympathy for the confused inhabitants of the impoverished town, as each character becomes a symbol for a segment of the world at large: the believer, the cynic, the doubter, and the lost. Even when detailing great sorrow and anguish, Guterson easily sidesteps pessimism to give a compassionate, penetrating view of life's beauty. Stylish, weighty, and shrewd, the narrative is as much a chronicle of our social dilemmas as it is about the doubts and moral uncertainties of our protagonists. A masterfully crafted and moving novel, Our Lady of the Forest will impress and astonish you with its examination of the nature of belief in our unsettled times. Tom Piccirilli

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Ann Holmes seems an unlikely candidate for revelation. A sixteen-year-old runaway, she is an itinerant mushroom picker who lives in a tent. But on a November afternoon, in the foggy woods of North Fork, Washington, the Virgin comes to her, clear as day.

Father Collins - a young priest new to North Fork - finds Ann disturbingly alluring. But it is up to him to evaluate - impartially - the veracity of Ann's sightings: Are they delusions, or a true calling to God? As word spreads and thousands, including the press, converge upon the town, Carolyn Greer, a smart-talking fellow mushroomer, becomes Ann's disciple of sorts, as well as her impromptu publicity manager. And Tom Cross, an embittered logger who's been out of work since his son was paralyzed in a terrible accident, finds in Ann's visions a last chance for redemption for both himself and his son.

As Father Collins searches his own soul and Ann's, as Carolyn struggles with her less than admirable intentions, as Tom alternates between despair and hope, Our Lady of the Forest tells a suspenseful, often wryly humorous, and deeply involving story of faith at a contemporary crossroads.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

The entire novel is marked by this turn toward the homely and the unnoticed. In his previous works of fiction, Guterson sought the moral high ground, giving us characters tinged with nobility living in places carved out of beauty. His brand of moral fiction, influenced by John Gardner, could at times seem insufferably righteous. Now, in Our Lady of the Forest, he overcomes his virtue problem, writing with more humor than ever before. For the first time, he seems interested in the mess and mud of real life … Guterson's previous do-the-right-thing morality is happily set aside in favor of a humanism that allows his people to lust, to be funny, to fail, to hurt one another. No one here does the right thing; no one knows what the right thing would be. Even the landscape is freed from being perfect. — Claire Dederer

The Washington Post

In the tradition of Franz Werfel's Song of Bernadette and Brian Moore's Cold Heaven, David Guterson has written a tale of what happens to a group of believers and nonbelievers when someone has visions of the Virgin Mary. — Carolyn See

Publishers Weekly

When Ann Holmes starts having visions of the Virgin Mary, the bedraggled teen runaway becomes the last hope for the inhabitants of a dank, economically depressed logging town and the hordes of miracle-seekers who descend on it. In this panoramic, psychologically dense novel, she also becomes a symbol of the intimate intertwining of the sacred and the profane in American life. Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars; East of the Mountains), tells the story from the viewpoint of four lost souls groping for redemption: Ann; Carolyn, an aging, overeducated, cynical drifter who takes Ann under her wing to profit from her growing fame; a local priest wrestling with his doubts about, and lust for, the visionary; and a tormented ex-logger trying to atone for the accident that paralyzed his son. Guterson's evocative prose, pithy dialogue and piercing insights cut through the fog of sin and guilt that shadows these wounded characters like the overcast sky of the Pacific Northwest. And as Ann's visions stimulate a tourism boom and draw the attention of media vultures and a skeptical Catholic Church, Guterson explores larger social themes-the demise of blue-collar America; the ironic symbiosis of religious devotion and commercial exploitation; the replacement of faith in God by faith in psychopharmacology; and the link between the exaltation of women's saintliness and the reality of women's degradation. Searching for the miraculous in the mundane, this ambitious and satisfying work builds vivid characters and trenchant storytelling into a serious and compassionate look at the moral quandaries of modern life. (Oct. 3) Forecast: The gloominess of this uncompromising novel may deflect some readers, but others will be drawn in by its intensity. Look for it to hit bestseller lists, though the 350,000 first printing may be ambitious. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Posters, reading group guides, and a 16-city author tour-Guterson is getting what you would surely expect of a "highly recommended" novel (see review, p. 166). Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal