GOOD NEWS FROM NORTH HAVEN - Softcover

Lindvall

3.98

98 ratings by Goodreads

9780671792008: GOOD NEWS FROM NORTH HAVEN

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671792008 ISBN 13: 9780671792008

Publisher: Pocket, 1992

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Tells the stories of the citizens of a small Minnesota town during the course of a year, from one Christmas to the next

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From Kirkus Reviews:

A debut collection of mild-mannered, sermon-like tales covering a year in the life of a Presbyterian minister in a small Minnesota town--by a native of Minneapolis and pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Northport, New York. Alter-ego Reverend David Battles arrived in the tiny town of North Haven fresh from seminary school and on his way to grander pulpits, but he and his family have discovered in their four years of small-town life that instead of outgrowing this backwater they've become attached to its every quirk and comfort--and have themselves become a local institution along the way. Tending to a flock of elderly sticks-in-the-mud (including Alvina Johnson, whose iron hand has directed the children's Christmas pageant for 46 years), middle-aged dreamers (like Lamont Wilcox, who's devoted his life to building a boat, though he lives 140 miles from any body of water), and passionate young folk (including Carmen Krepke, a young motorcycle mama who believes she saw Christ on a Harley), Battles presides over Grand Kick-Off Dinners, youthful weddings, and dubious baptisms with restful equanimity, all the while searching for the moral to every little tale. All of which makes for a pleasant enough (if highly homogenized) view-from-the-pulpit of human nature, even if Lindvall's tightly structured and predictable tales echo all too clearly the sermons from which they originally sprang. Prairie Home Companion without the sharp edges--but a good substitute for going to church on Sunday. -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

A collection of tales assembled to illuminate a year in the life of a Presbyterian minister and his small-town Minnesota flock, The Good News from North Haven reads more like a collection of autobiographical essays than fiction. The author, himself a minister, concludes most of the stories with a biblical interpretation; indeed some of these could be applauded as enlightened sermons. Two of them--"The Christmas Pageant" and "Christmas Baptism"--were published in Good Housekeeping . Wandering through the same country as Garrison Keillor and Robert Fulghum, Lindvall has a kindhearted, humorous way of exposing human fears and foibles. Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild selections.
-Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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