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And this is one salutary feature of pastel America: it is a place where both suffering and God are intimately present, and where the two still have something to do with each other. It's easy enough, in the preternaturally youthful environs of Cambridge, Manhattan, or Berkeley, to laugh at the amount of time that soap opera characters spend in hospitals. It is also most fashionable to ask where God is when people suffer—theoretically speaking, of course. But who, I began to wonder after a dozen or two novels, has the clearer view of the human condition—the stay-at-home mom with aging parents (which describes both the readers and the writers of many of these books), or the young urban professional with a membership at the gym? Which one has more truly experienced the tangible reality of the Curse and the risks of love?

Ah, but now I myself have fallen into the most consistent pattern of all in these books. If the hero's journey, so basic to Western literature, goes back at least to Odysseus, contemporary Christian novels are stuffed with errant Penelopes who find salvation—or at least narrative resolution—in returning to their knitting.

No River, which is worth a glance because of the creative yet representative way in which Foster, the winner of a 2001 Christy Award for her first novel, plays changes upon this theme. Ain't No River's protagonist is Garvin Daniels, an African American lawyer in Washington, D.C. She wears DKNY suits, drives a Lexus, and wins multimillion-dollar lawsuits. She also faces racism in her law firm, which leads to an internal investigation based on trumped-up charges brought by a rival attorney. Placed on leave for three months until the investigation is finished, and alarmed by the increasingly erratic behavior of her aging grandmother, Meemaw, Garvin leaves D.C. and drives three hours to Jacks Creek, North Carolina, her birthplace near the Cape Fear River.

Foster's tone is decidedly popular, laying on portions of symbolism every bit as generous as Meemaw's helpings of pecan pie. With a title like Ain't No River, you can guess that things aquatic will figure prominently in the story. And you can rest assured that no strand of plot will go untwisted, only to be woven back into a happy ending. But Foster's ears and pen are tuned to the rhythm and pace of small-town African American life, from the barbershop to the beauty parlor, from the church to the basketball court, and her dialogue sparkles with a memorable concreteness.

Shortly after arriving in Jacks Creek, Garvin walks into the local beauty shop to glean some information from the proprietor, who is doing the hair of a woman named Esther:

Garvin knew the young woman saw her, even though she did not acknowledge her, had given no clue to Esther that someone was behind her. The young beautician was doing that thing that some country people do—that thing Garvin had forgotten being gone so long from home. She went on with her conversation as though Garvin was not standing there, so that there was time. Plenty of time to acknowledge a stranger, time enough to take in all the details, all the nuances . …A tactic that some unknowing stranger might take for slowness was actually a country-fried, gravy-smothered form of perception.

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