About the Author:
Susan Howatch is a British novelist who has penned bestselling mysteries, family sagas, and other novels. Howatch was born in Surrey, England. She began writing as a teen and published her first book when she moved to the United States in 1964. Howatch found global success first with her five sagas and then with her novels about the Church of England in the twentieth century. She has now returned to live in Surrey.
From Booklist:
The sixth and final part of Howatch's Church of England series is a powerful advocate of the whole, matching the drama and emotional reach of Glamorous Powers (1988) and Ultimate Prizes (1989). Charles Ashworth, the narrator of the first in the series (Glittering Images, 1987), is even more attractive as an aging intellectual bishop struggling to come to terms with the very un-Christian 1960s. His attempt to maintain discipline, faith, and a relationship with God in the midst of a troubling secular world goes right to the heart of the Howatch project in these six magnificent novels. There's really very little like this work in modern literature. There are hints of Trollope, hints of C. S. Lewis, in these pages, but nowhere else does one discover the distinctive genius of Anglican theology--intelligent, commonsensical, optimistic--so movingly wrapped in the heartbreaking dramas of husbands, wives, fathers, children, and spiritual guides. At the center of each novel is a tragedy, beyond which is an epiphany the narrator cannot quite grasp. Charles' tragedy is the loss of his closest companion, but, of course, his problems go much deeper. The shield of his glittering image, shattered once before, six novels ago, is shattered again. But Howatch's novels are not so much about tragedy as about the way ordinary men and women struggle through humility and forgiveness toward the far horizon of redemption. Little more can be said about this miraculous cycle of novels. These are works that deserve to endure well beyond the troubled age that spawned them. Stuart Whitwell
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