"This gentle, gorgeously written book may be one of my favorites
ever." --Jenna Bush Hager (A Today show "Read with Jenna" Book Club
Selection!)
"A thoughtful, beautiful multigenerational novel about love, God,
jealousy, and friendship." --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray,
Love
"A moving portrait of love and friendship set against a backdrop of
social change." --The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)
"Here is the power of the novel in its simplest, richest form: bearing
intimate witness to human beings grappling with their faith and falling
in love. That Wall executes it so beautifully? Well, this is exactly why
we read literary fiction...The best book about faith in recent memory."
--Entertainment Weekly (A-)
Charles and Lily, James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963
when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third
Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences
however, threaten to tear them apart.
Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of
history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to
ministry. How then, can he fall in love with Lily--fiercely
intellectual, elegantly stern--after she tells him with certainty that
she will never believe in God? And yet, how can he not?
James, the youngest son in a hardscrabble Chicago family, spent much of
his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother.
Nan grew up in Mississippi, the devout and beloved daughter of a
minister and a debutante. James's escape from his desperate
circumstances leads him to Nan and, despite his skepticism of hope in
all its forms, her gentle, constant faith changes the course of his
life.
In The Dearly Beloved, we follow these two couples through decades of
love and friendship, jealousy and understanding, forgiveness and
commitment. Against the backdrop of turbulent changes facing the city
and the church's congregation, these four forge improbable paths through
their evolving relationships, each struggling with uncertainty,
heartbreak, and joy. A poignant meditation on faith and reason, marriage
and children, and the ways we find meaning in our lives, Cara Wall's
The Dearly Beloved is a gorgeous, wise, and provocative novel that is
destined to become a classic.
