This week, we feature Laura Ingalls Wilder’s most harrowing volume and a feel-good history of two American emblems: baseball and presidents.
Fiction A Turn-of-the-Century Western
‘So Brave, Young, and Handsome: A Novel’
By Leif Enger
It’s 1915 and Monte Becket, a father, husband, and writer, is looking for adventure—or at least something to write about. After meeting outlaw Glendon Hale, Becket joins him on a wild journey to the West. A delightful modern Western that pulls at the heart.
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008, 272 pages Spiritual Battles
‘Glittering Images: A Novel’
By Susan Howatch
This novel is the first of six in the “Starbridge Series,” which begins in the 1930s and tells a story of religious and cultural crises over the next four decades. The characters, many of whom appear in several or all of the books, are vividly drawn and associated with the fictional diocese of Starbridge and its Anglican monastic order. In addition to the entertaining plots, we see the interplay between culture and faith up through the 1960s, often with devastating consequences for the Church of England….