Coordinator:   Alison Gibson (803) 603-0595 (cell)
                                                (630) 868-3507 (H)
                        arc6a@virginia.edu

Thursday, October 11      
    Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (1948)
    Summary:The most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.

Thursday, November 8  
    Bel Canto  by Ann Patchet (2002)
    Summary:Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different countries and continents become compatriots. Friendship, compassion, and the chance for great love lead the characters to forget the real danger that has been set in motion and cannot be stopped.

Thursday, December 13    
    Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott (1999)
    Summary: Despite—or because of—her irreverence, faith is a natural subject for Anne Lamott. Since Lamott wrote Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her fans have been waiting for her to write the book that explained how she came to the big-hearted, grateful, generous faith that she so often alluded to in her two earlier nonfiction books. Lamott's faith isn't about easy answers, which is part of what endears her to believers as well as nonbelievers. Against all odds, she came to believe in God and then, even more miraculously, in herself. As she puts it, "My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers." At once tough, personal, affectionate, wise, and very funny, Traveling Mercies tells in exuberant detail how Anne Lamott learned to shine the light of faith on the darkest part of ordinary life, exposing surprising pockets of meaning and hope.

Thursday, January 17 (3rd Thursday due to Christmas Break)      
    A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken (1987)
    Summary:This love story chronicles the relationship between Sheldon and his wife Davy. While studying at Oxford, Sheldon and Davy develop a friendship with C.S. Lewis, under whose influence and with much intellectual scrutiny they accept the Christian doctrine. As their devotion to God intensifies, Sheldon realizes that he is no longer Davy's primary love—God is. Within this discovery begins a brewing jealousy. Shortly after, Davy acquires a fatal illness. After her death, Sheldon embarks on an intense experience of grief. Through painstaking reveries, he comes to discover the meaning of "a mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love." Replete with 18 letters from C.S. Lewis, A Severe Mercy addresses some of the universal questions that surround faith—the existence of God and the reasons behind tragedy.

Thursday, February 14     
    Home by Marilynne Robinson (2008)
    Summary: Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames’s closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a 2008 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

Thursday, March 21 (3rd Thursday due to Spring Break)        
    Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972) (Note: 400+ pages)
    Summary:Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family. Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward's investigation leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life. The result is a deeply moving novel that, through the prism of one family, illuminates the American present against the fascinating background of its past.  

Thursday, April 11            
    Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (1927)
    Summary: The novel is notable for its portrayal of two well-meaning and devout French priests who encounter a well-entrenched Spanish-Mexican clergy they are sent to supplant when the United States acquired New Mexico and the Vatican, in turn, remapped its dioceses. Several of these entrenched priests are depicted in classic manner as examples of greed, avarice and gluttony, while others live simple, abstemious lives among the Native Americans. Cather portrays the Hopi and Navajo sympathetically, and her characters express the near futility of overlaying their religion on a millennia-old native culture. The novel was included on Time's list of 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005 and Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. 

Thursday, May 9            
    Dwelling Places by Vinita Hampton Wright (2007)
    Summary: In this extraordinarily well-observed, contemplative novel, Wright, a Wheaton College alumnus, focuses on a present-day Iowa family reeling from one tragedy after another. Its matriarch, Rita Mae Barnes, copes with the loss of her husband, son and farm by taking care of everyone around her. Her surviving son, Mack, struggles with depression serious enough to warrant a stay in a psychiatric hospital, while his desperately tired wife, Jodie, attempts to raise their children and support the family in his absence. It's not an easy task: their 14-year-old daughter, Kenzie, becomes enamored of a Christian cult and a mentally ill 35-year-old man, and their 17-year-old son, Young Taylor, slouches around town in full goth attire, baiting local law enforcement and loitering at the cemetery. Despite the bleakness of these circumstances, Wright manages an astounding level of honesty and plenty of wry humor without falling into nihilism. This novel eschews hackneyed pietism in favor of an authentic portrait of people who do not completely regret their mistakes and are still learning how to accept God's consolation.