Season’s Readings

The fall harvest of books is in. The fruits of many talented writers and illustrators are stacked on the shelves, just in time for Christmas giving. Here are a few of the most interesting offerings: they range from novels and family sagas to poems and illustrations and songs.

Memories And Mercies

• Images of grace sprinkle the compact story line of Remembering, a novel by Wendell Berry (North Point, $14.95). The action is simple: Andy Catlett, a Kentucky farmer caught up in the frenzied world of agribusiness, comes home from San Francisco. But this is no routine return from a business trip; it is the final return of a prodigal from a long journey. It is the culmination of several stages of return, of repeated memories of a father’s call and touch.

Berry uses water as a particularly striking symbol. For example, during a punishingly hot day of chopping corn, two of Andy’s forebears sink themselves in the cool creek whenever they get too hot. “It was there all the time,” one of the characters muses. “Redemption, a little flowing stream.” This and other family memories draw Andy back to the land. Later, he walks about a farm he intends to buy until he finds a cool, clear spring; he drinks deeply of the water and feels the hurry of his busy life flow out of him.

The motions of grace in this story occur in ordinary life. Reconciliation is both a believable and startling mercy, coming with jet-plane swiftness.

• In Born Brothers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18.95), author Larry Woiwode extends the crisis of grace over the whole of another young prodigal’s life. Woiwode’s complex plot and writing style portray a different conversion: in one sense, it is all so simple, like “Jesus Loves Me”; yet it is as complex and as confusing as Job or Ecclesiastes.

• The Old Testament characters of Jacob and Laban sometimes seem like two real estate tycoons on the make, swindling each other at every turn. Yet in Madeleine L’Engle’s poem, “Leah”—wife, daughter, and pawn in Jacob and Laban’s game—finds grace even in the family pattern of deceit in which she and Rachel have joined: “… yet, from our deceit / and from our love / we gave to Jacob/twelve sons, twelve nations / and, in the end, / one God.”

“Leah” is one of 70 poems by L’Engle drawn from biblical characters and events and collected in Cry Like a Bell (Shaw, $8.95). The title piece celebrates the birth of Jesus: “The Child’s first cry came like a bell: / God’s word aloud, God’s Word in deed.”

• Mining from the rich lode of Celtic lore, Stephen Lawhead has written Merlin (Crossway, $10.95), a richly textured reimagining of the Arthurian legends of ancient Britain, set during the time of Roman emperors Gratian and Theodosius (367–95).

The tensions between the old Druid religion and the claims of Jesus are a recurring theme during the life of the young Merlin, who later becomes the wizard of Arthur’s court. It is a picture of grace in the days when Western civilization was just emerging from paganism; it is one that may help us in these days of resurgent paganism.

Through The Generations

• Artist Rien Poortvliet has in the past given us Gnomes; He Was One of Us: The Life of Jesus of Nazareth; and Noah’s Ark. His latest effort, In My Grandfather’s House (Abrams, $39.95), stems from a boyhood visit to his uncle’s house on an island in the south of Holland. It takes us back through ten generations to 1610, but concentrates on the decades around the turn of the twentieth century.

Although the text is fascinating, the paintings and drawings make this a superior book. Working in a variety of media, Poortvliet shows the people, the buildings, the animals, and the countryside of his homeland in their many seasons and moods. Daily work patterns, the font where generations were christened, hymns composed by Valerius, the efforts of church elders to discipline one of his forebears, childhood games and toys, gossiping old men on the square, and the incursions of Napoleon and other invaders are all woven into the family chronicle.

Influenced by Dutch genre and landscape traditions, particularly Rembrandt and Ruisdael, Poortvliet treats us to sharp, clear memories. Color, light, and line combine and move beyond mere illustration to express joy, pain, contentment, and struggle. One smells the odors, feels the wind, and hears the old folks singing psalms.

• If you have not read the story of the Wesley brothers, A Heart Set Free: The Life of Charles Wesley, by Arnold A. Dallimore (Crossway, $13.95), is a good place to start. Born into a large family, seeking to be saved by works and then discovering grace, John and Charles Wesley eventually had great impact on England and America. Their ministry and the development of early Methodism are chronicled in clear prose.

• The Wesley Hymns, by John Lawson (Zondervan, $14.95), provides annotation for about 140 of Charles and John Wesley’s hymns. After a brief introduction that places the Wesleys in the history of Christian worship, the hymns are grouped under 53 topics covering the whole of theology. Commentary includes a summary of each doctrine, Scripture references for every line of the printed hymn texts, and a complete Scripture index.

Sight And Sound

• Some themes can be visited many times without tiring. Such is the case with Noah and the Ark, with the biblical text illustrated by Pauline Baynes (Henry Holt, $14.95). Created mainly for those ages 6–10, it provides any adult with new insights and joy.

Baynes, who illustrated Lewis’s Narnia series and Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham, echoes the flattened perspective and delicacy of Oriental prints and medieval illuminated manuscripts. A comparison of the hurried entrance of the animals into the ark with their joyful, pell-mell exit shows that she has captured both the urgency and the celebration of God’s redemption.

• Can a hymnbook be more than words and music? Songs of Praise, collected and arranged by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, $16.95), offers 15 favorite hymns that are illuminated as a devotional book suitable for all ages.

Following the tradition of a medieval Book of the Hours, the border art moves from spring through winter. Rural peasant scenes provide an apt setting for “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” (by Charles Wesley), “Amazing Grace,” “O God Our Help in Ages Past” (Watts’s version of Psalm 90), and “We Gather Together” (tune from Valerius’s Collection).

By Larry Sibley, who teaches practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He is the author of Matthew: People of the Kingdom (Harold Shaw).

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