Faith
In her luminous new new novel, Faith
(Harper), author Jennifer Haigh has much more on her mind than
religious belief; faith in your God may well matter, but so does faith
in those you love and in yourself. With the sexual abuse scandal that
rocked Boston's Catholic archdiocese in 2002 as the backdrop, narrator
Sheila McGann recounts a chain of events that shattered her older
half-brother Art's life as a priest when he was accused of fondling a
young boy. "And the evidence either way—of his guilt or innocence—was
very slim," Sheila says. The novel has the magnetic, page-turning
quality of a detective thriller, but the clues here lead not to
objective proof but to insight into a family both vividly specific and
astonishingly universal—a family full of secrets, resentments, and
divided loyalties. Sheila, another brother, and their mother react to
Art's situation according to their own needs for self-justification,
while Art refuses to fight the charge, not because he abused the child
but because "in his own eyes he was not blameless. He was simply guilty
of a different crime." Almost everybody in this wise novel has
trespassed in one way or another—and everyone needs forgiveness. As
Sheila reminds us: "Faith is a decision. In its most basic form, it is a
choice." And every choice, we learn, has its consequence.
— Liza Nelson
