HOME by Marilynne Robinson

FIC
Robinson

HOME is set in the same location as Robinson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel GILEAD but in a different household. Thirty-eight year old Glory Boughton has returned to her hometown to care for her dying father, Reverend Robert Boughton, and nurse her wounds after a broken engagement. Shortly after her arrival, her long-estranged older brother, Jack, appears at the doorstep. No one had heard from him in twenty years, his life unraveling in a haze of alcoholism, unemployment and bad decisions. Glory provides a mediating guidance between bad boy Jack and his traditional father. HOME is a moving novel, spiritual and focused on the healing power of families and faith.

MR. IVES'S CHRISTMAS by Oscar Hijuelos

FIC

HIJUELOS,O.

This touching book details the life of Mr. Ives, a foundling in New York. From his modest beginnings he finds love and spiritual fulfillment.

One Christmas tragedy strikes: his son is senselessly murdered. Mr. Ives questions his faith in God and man. He contacts the family of the murderer and in time begins a correspondence with the man who killed his son. Eventually he reconnects with his life and his God but the Journey is not easy.

A very good read at any time of the year.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

FIC
Martel, Y.

Sixteen-year-old Pi is on his way from India to a new home in Canada when the ship carrying him, his family, and many of the animals formerly in his family's zoo, sinks. Pi finds himself alone on a 32-man lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Time, determination, and Pi's knowledge of animals help him establish a territory the tiger respects. Both the tiger and Pi's faiths-Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism-help the two survive a horrific 227 days at sea. When investigators from the shipping company refuse to believe Pi's story, he presents them with an alternate version. Even the executives admit their preference for Pi's original, possibly metaphorical, tale. So it is, Pi points out, with God.

Though Martel takes much time recounting Pi's early history, the patient reader will be rewarded.