Saint Maybe - Hardcover

Tyler, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679403612 ISBN 13: 9780679403616

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991

Synopsis

Saint Maybe is the rich and absorbing story of a young man's guilt over his brother's death and his struggle to atone for the wrong he feels he has done.

On a quiet street in Baltimore in 1965, seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe lives with his family in an "ideal, apple-pie household," enjoying the comfort of family traditions and indulging in all the usual dreams of the future. Until one night, when Ian's stinging words to his brother bring tragedy -- and from that careless moment on nothing can ever be the same.

Anne Tyler takes us along Ian's painful and poignant quest for forgiveness, from the Church of the Second Chance to Ian's gratifying, solitary work as a carpenter. Raising the three children that are thrust on him, he finds himself amazed, drowning in family and duty. Then, out of the very heart of the domestic clutter, a light begins to flash.

About this title

Review:

Tyler makes things look so easy that she never gets enough credit, yet she portrays everyday Americans with such humor, grace and, ultimately, emotional force that her books are always deeply satisfying. In Saint Maybe her protagonist Ian Bedloe, stricken with guilt over the death of his older brother, raises three children unrelated to him by blood. He is strengthened in this Herculean task by the storefront Church of the Second Chance, to which he devotes himself with equal fervor. Someone once said all great writers are comic writers. Among living Americans, Tyler is exhibit A.

From the Back Cover:

"Saint Maybe is vintage Tyler, delicately stamped, like a watermark, with her intimate and unmistakable voice...Ian Bedloe sits near the top of Ms. Tyler's fine list of heroes...An arresting novel."
--The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0679403612
• ISBN 13: 9780679403616
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 337