(These days, I’m usually glad if people are reading anything at all, and glad that there are those who are hooked on books, even if it ain’t the Pulitzer stuff. And, it has always been our joy to celebrate good stories being read. However, we ought not be too quick to dismiss it all as sentimental silliness some is quite fine. Some of this religiously-overt storytelling has been of poor quality (artistically and theologically) and has justly gotten a bad rap from sophisticated critics. Yes, yes, the novels of Victor Hugo and Flannery O’Connor–heck, even the Canterbury Tales–are Christian fiction but nowadays, this has come to mean inspirational stories published by evangelical publishers, written for religious readers, where the faith and devotion of the characters comes to particular focus. Better, his solid descriptions of the topography and road names and farm buildings allow the reader to inhabit this place, knowing it is so very real.īeverly Lewis is a beloved leader in what has come to be termed “Christian fiction” which, ofĬourse, is a product category of the evangelical sub-culture which our store serves. Although Wendell Berry made up the town of Port Williams, the map in Hannah Coulter sure makes you think it is real. One of my best friends lived for a while in Arizona, and assured me he could take me to an exact tree so well described in one of Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee Navajo mystery novels. Most people like it, I think, when a novel has been well-researched to get the local landmarks right.
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