From Publishers Weekly
As he has repeatedly been told, it was the deathbed wish of Frank Healy's mother that he become a priest. In the frozen reaches of northern Minnesota in 1949, Frank, a serious, studious youngster, is tempted from that vocation only by Libby Girard, a schoolmate whose violent home life does not impair her spectacular beauty. Libby marries a farmer and bears a daughter who grows to be a mentally ill femme fatale; Frank enters the priesthood. Twenty years later when Father Frank returns to his hometown parish to serve among townsfolk and Ojibwa Indians on the nearby reservation, Libby is there, too, with her third husband, a slimy, drug-dealing doctor, who has been sent by court order to work for the Indian Health Service. Although somewhat slow-going until the halfway mark, this increasingly evocative novel then picks up speed and acquires depth, spinning out an alcohol-soused tale of heartbreak, strained faith and sordid intrigue. Hassler ( Grand Opening ) beautifully limns each character, from the curmudgeonly parish housekeeper touched by a sweet and funny older priest, to a stepfather sick and selfish enough to heedlessly destroy two lives.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Plagued by a dubious sense of vocation, Father Frank Healy requests reassignment to his hometown parish and the nearby Ojibway reservation church. Here he encounters Libby Pearsall, the passionate woman whom he has silently loved since childhood, and she and her troubled daughter soon become his greatest personal and pastoral challenge. Hassler's narrative style and implied values are old-fashioned but solid. He acknowledges evil and portrays it convincingly in the form of drug-dealing, greed, and murder, but he also displays the power of loving kindness. Some humorous scenes of parish life recall the delightful stories of J.F. Powers, and, like Powers, Hassler treats Roman Catholic concerns in such a way that their appeal is truly catholic.
- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., CookevilleCopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
