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abstract_amber77's review
4.0
This was a required reading for a religion class in college. I remember being excited about being assigned a book where I actually wanted to read beyond what was required of me for the week. I read it again about a year ago and was able to appreciate even more now.
rachelgertrude's review
3.0
Frank Healy grows up in the shadow of his mother's death, reminded frequently of her deathbed wish, "I want Frank to be a priest." His life afterward is marked for the priesthood. When he meets Libby Girard, however, his heart tells him something different. Walking to school each day, their friendship soon grows to love, even as Libby dates other men. It is upset only when Libby marries her high-school boyfriend after discovering she is pregnant. Frank goes on to become a priest.
Twenty-three years later, Frank, suffering from the "big leak" of a vocational crisis, returns to his hometown, assigned to replace the aging pastor. Here he finds Libby again, married for the third time to a drug-dealing doctor, and living in the wake of a tempestuous daughter. Her unhappiness leads her to seek out the only man who ever treated her with respect and true love, and Frank struggles to find a way to love Libby while remaining true to his priestly vocation.
This book conveys struggle and the human condition very well. Frank, now middle-aged, must reconcile with the fact that he entered a vocation more from his mother's wish than from hearing a call. Libby, on the other hand, finds that the world she has built for herself echoes her own dysfunctional upbringing in an alcholic home, and is not the life she was truly meant to live.
What do you do when you find that you made the wrong decision, and that this decision has affected everything? Do you seek escape from the path you are on, or do you accept the decision you made and live with it? While knowing what the high road ought to be, it is our nature to seek the path of least resistence, the path of least suffering, and this is where our struggle comes from: a struggle Jon Hassler portrayed skillyfully in North of Hope.
Twenty-three years later, Frank, suffering from the "big leak" of a vocational crisis, returns to his hometown, assigned to replace the aging pastor. Here he finds Libby again, married for the third time to a drug-dealing doctor, and living in the wake of a tempestuous daughter. Her unhappiness leads her to seek out the only man who ever treated her with respect and true love, and Frank struggles to find a way to love Libby while remaining true to his priestly vocation.
This book conveys struggle and the human condition very well. Frank, now middle-aged, must reconcile with the fact that he entered a vocation more from his mother's wish than from hearing a call. Libby, on the other hand, finds that the world she has built for herself echoes her own dysfunctional upbringing in an alcholic home, and is not the life she was truly meant to live.
What do you do when you find that you made the wrong decision, and that this decision has affected everything? Do you seek escape from the path you are on, or do you accept the decision you made and live with it? While knowing what the high road ought to be, it is our nature to seek the path of least resistence, the path of least suffering, and this is where our struggle comes from: a struggle Jon Hassler portrayed skillyfully in North of Hope.
jeanetterenee's review
4.0
Lovely. Jon Hassler is sort of the Richard Russo of Northern Minnesota.
I would happily have read an entire book about these characters as teenagers. I was just so charmed by the Linden Falls of 1950, but Hassler had a different story to tell. After introducing us to Frank and Libby as youngsters, he jumps forward 25 years to examine the ways in which life choices at the age of 17 or 18 determine what our lives will look like at middle age.
I fell in love with Father Frank Healy in somewhat the same way I fell in love with Father Melancholy in Gail Godwin's novel. While I don't share their religious beliefs or dedication to ritual, I do admire some clerics for their devotion to service. What stands out most boldly about Frank is not his Catholicism, but his willingness to BE THERE, any time, any place, for anyone who needs him. He offers steadfast friendship, money, protection, nonjudgmental advice, humor, and most of all, HOPE.
After a dreadful winter, Libby says to Frank, "It's like hope doesn't reach this far north." To which Frank replies, "But it does, Libby. Hope goes wherever you want it to." To me, that is Frank's purpose in the lives of his parishioners. He is hope incarnate.
I would happily have read an entire book about these characters as teenagers. I was just so charmed by the Linden Falls of 1950, but Hassler had a different story to tell. After introducing us to Frank and Libby as youngsters, he jumps forward 25 years to examine the ways in which life choices at the age of 17 or 18 determine what our lives will look like at middle age.
I fell in love with Father Frank Healy in somewhat the same way I fell in love with Father Melancholy in Gail Godwin's novel. While I don't share their religious beliefs or dedication to ritual, I do admire some clerics for their devotion to service. What stands out most boldly about Frank is not his Catholicism, but his willingness to BE THERE, any time, any place, for anyone who needs him. He offers steadfast friendship, money, protection, nonjudgmental advice, humor, and most of all, HOPE.
After a dreadful winter, Libby says to Frank, "It's like hope doesn't reach this far north." To which Frank replies, "But it does, Libby. Hope goes wherever you want it to." To me, that is Frank's purpose in the lives of his parishioners. He is hope incarnate.
raehink's review
4.0
A priest wrestling with his faith is assigned to the parish he grew up in as a boy. I really enjoy Hassler's writing.
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