When a mysterious stranger arrives in a Texas town that has fallen on hard times, he profoundly affects a number of residents--including a lovelorn restaurant owner, an aging priest, and a young boy
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In the ordinary time of her title--in those parts of the liturgical year between the holy seasons--Mojtabai ( Blessed Assurance ) explores the ways faith is tried and practiced by residents of the Texas town of Durance, where a drifter named Val, his memory lost in a car accident, steps off a bus. Val takes a job in Henrietta's Three Square Meals restaurant, across the street from the cemetery. Henrietta, who attends the Rooftree Pentecostal Church, is a widow with a gutsy optimism and a firm, every-day kind of faith. Father Gilvary, whose parishioners at St. Jude's are old and dying, eats breakfast at Henrietta's every morning after Mass. He believes St. Jude's will become a mission when he retires, which may be soon: he has just learned he is going blind. A young man named Cleat, a foundling who has never been quite "right," develops a growing attachment to Val. The secretive Val moves through the dry summer as a kind of absence to whom Henrietta, Fr. Gilvary and Cleat respond, as Mojtabai's simple and precise prose bares the subtle daily adjustments that occur in their inner and public lives. Not much goes on in her story, but life is rendered truthfully and with grace.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"Ordinary time," notes Father Gilvary, is "the longest, and hardest, season of the liturgical year." Especially in dusty Durance, Texas: "buried in the Dust Bowl, resurrected in the oil boom, now, fallen again on hard times." Here, Father Gilvary is experiencing a crisis of faith, going blind figuratively as well as literally. Sprightly Henrietta, who runs the Three Square Meals restaurant, is a fervent Pentecostal who can't quite commit. And Cleat, the town waif whose parentage is unknown, just drifts. Into their lives comes Val, a stranger on the run. Though the town had been waiting for something to happen, the violent outcome of Cleat's worship of Val wasn't it. The novel's unhurried pace and quiet revelations can at times make it seem ordinary, too; indeed, the stripped-down prose gives the characters little depth. Still, this is a well-wrought novel whose power grows and whose message--what we love can destroy us--is clearly rendered.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. When a mysterious stranger arrives in a Texas town that has fallen on hard times, he profoundly affects a number of residents--including a lovelorn restaurant owner, an aging priest, and a young boy Please note the image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item. Book. Seller Inventory # 123475359
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Hard Back. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition Stated. 223 pages. September 1989 printing. Dust jacket has unclipped 17.95 price. Set in the high, lonely plains of Texas this novel speaks to the ultimate questions of faith and hard testing. Durance is a town that has fallen on hard times. While the Chamber of Commerce dreams of rescue by hi-tech industry the townsfolk dream of Jesus splitting the clouds and wait his second coming. Into this town comes not Jesus but a stranger named Val, fleeing a past. Attracted by the emptiness, he pulls his suitcase off the bus and walks in to the lives of Henrietta who is waiting for love, Father Gilvary an aging Catholic priest waiting for validation of his faith and a boy, Cleat who has been waiting for a long time for whom or what nobody can say. In the spirit of Flannery O'Connor, A. G. Mojtabai explores the strange parallels of religious and secular life. This novel is concerned with how we live day by day, in ordinary time as opposed to extraordinary time. This is a novel about waiting, enduring, and prevailing. Seller Inventory # 4777
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