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A review by rachelgertrude
North of Hope by Jon Hassler, Amy Welborn
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.