Library : Faiths in Fiction

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Faiths in Fiction

Novels with background based on various religious texts, or stories which show how religious or spiritual beliefs have motivated the principal characters.

ABRAHAM, PEARL
THE ROMANCE READER
Rachel, the daughter of a rabbi, rebels against her strict Orthodox upbringing by reading romances, but finds that she cannot escape her heritage as her parents arrange for her marriage.

ANSAY, A. MANETTE
RIVER ANGEL
A rural legend-of an angel watching over a river-provides the framework for this novel about faith and its power to transform individuals and a community.

APPEL, ALLAN
HIGH HOLIDAY SUTRA
In a hilarious Yom Kippur sermon, Rabbi Jonah Grief tells the story of his struggle for enlightenment. Beginning with his bar mitzvah, he chronicles his adolescence, his unconsummated first marriage, and his tortured search for meaning through Judaism.

BALDWIN, JAMES
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
Religious experience in Harlem focusing on the conversion of a boy on his 14th birthday and flashing back three generations.

BARKER, SHIRLEY
STRANGE WIVES
In the early 1800's the Jewish families of Lisbon, practicing their religion in secret, find that Roger Williams has declared Rhode Island free from religious persecution and decide to emigrate.

BARRETT, WILLIAM
LILIES OF THE FIELD
Homer Smith, a black Baptist former Army sergeant and nearly mythological figure, in an unlikely turn of events ends up helping some Catholic nuns, refugees from East Germany, to build a chapel in the New Mexican desert.

BEAUSEIGNEUR, JAMES
THE CHRIST CLONE TRILOGY: IN HIS IMAGE; BIRTH OF AN AGE; ACTS OF GOD
While examining the shroud of Turin - believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ - Professor Harold Goodman makes an incredible discovery: a cluster of skin cells still alive after 2000 years. The cloning of the "Messiah of the New Age" produces results that reflect the catastrophes in the book of Revelation.

BENARD, ROBERT
A CATHOLIC EDUCATION
Compassionately explores the conflicts of a young Jesuit seminarian who is beginning to doubt his vocation.

BENSON, ROBERT
COME RACK! COME ROPE
Deals with the persecution of Catholics during the time of Elizabeth I, when the Jesuit martyr, Edmund Campion, was a prominent figure.

BENTZ, JOSEPH
A SON COMES HOME
A thoughtful re-examination of lessons found in one of Jesus' most inspiring stories, the parable of the prodigal son. United in grief, a family struggles to heal old wounds.

BERRY, STEVE
THE THIRD SECRET
Monsignor Colin Michener, confidante of Pope Clement XV, discovers that the "third secret" of Fatima revealed by John Paul II in the year 2000, had another more chilling portion which was not told to the faithful.

BLACKSTOCK, TERRI
CAPE REFUGE
On a small barrier island east of Savannah, Georgia lies Cape Refuge, the site of Hanover House, a halfway home for ex-cons and derelicts run by the island's most beloved no-nonsense Christian couple. When the Owenses are found spear-gunned in their warehouse church, the island and its inhabitants get turned upside-down.

BUNN, T. DAVIS
THE QUILT
Mary, an elderly grandmother whose gnarled, arthritic hands have a beauty all their own, has always been there to listen and comfort and encourage those who were in pain, those who had lost their way. Mary becomes convinced that the task still unfinished is to make one more very special quilt. With every stitch sewn in prayer and thankfulness, the impact on her family and the surrounding community cannot be contained. No one who gets involved with this quilting project will ever be quite the same again!

CALDWELL, TAYLOR
GREAT LION OF GOD
Saul (Paul) of Tarsus, a devout student of the Torah, mercilessly persecutes Christians until he experiences an awakening on the road to Damascus.

COOLEY, MARTHA
THE ARCHIVIST
Matthias Lane, a widower in his 60s, is an archivist and guardian to a collection of letters between T.S. Eliot and his friend Emily Hale. This invaluable correspondence is off-limits until 2019, but Roberta, an attractive poet, is determined to gain access to it and draws Matthias into a tense tango of negotiations that unfreezes painful memories of his poet-wife's suicide.

COPELAND, LORI
JUNE
Mail-order bride June Kallahan arrives in Seattle from Michigan to discover that her intended, Eli Messenger, the assistant to a famous evangelist named Isaac Inman, is ill.

CRAVEN, MARGARET
I HEARD THE OWL CALL MY NAME
A young Anglican missionary, terminally ill, is sent to a parish of remote villages, becomes accepted by the Indians by sharing their suffering and work.

DALEY, ROBERT
THE INNOCENTS WITHIN
An American pilot shot down over central France during WWII falls in love with the Jewish ward of a pastor who runs an underground resistance network. Based on a true story of pastor Andre Trocme of LeChambon sur Lignon.

DOCTOROW, E.L.
CITY OF GOD
When a cross disappears from an Episcopal church and reappears in a synagogue, members of the clergy must examine a deep religious mystery. A mosaic touching on love and loneliness, faith and physics.

DOUGLAS, LLOYD C.
THE ROBE
A Roman soldier wins the robe of a crucified itinerant preacher as a gambling prize and sets out to find the truth about the Nazarene's teachings.

EDGHILL, INDIA
QUEENMAKER
When Saul is crowned the first king of Israel his youngest daughter, Michal, falls for the handsome charmer, David.

ENDO, SHUSAKU
SILENCE
In feudal Japan a Portuguese priest is sent to rebuild a shattered Christian community.

ERDRICH, LOUISE
LAST REPORT ON THE MIRACLES AT LITTLE NO HORSE
Agnes DeWitt, disguised as Father Damien Modeste, tries to bring Catholicism to the Ojibwas of a North Dakota reservation.

FAST, HOWARD
MOSES, PRINCE OF EGYPT
The young Moses, growing from boyhood to manhood, prepares for the role of prince-god.

GAINES, ERNEST J.
IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE
Reverend Phillip Martin's life is thrown into disorder when his illegitimate son appears unexpectedly. The confrontation brings to the fore many questions about father-and-son relationships and the conflict between the more conservative and militant factions in the black community.

GILES, JANICE HOLT
THE BELIEVERS
When Rebecca and Richard Cooper join a Kentucky Shaker community, they learn that what may seem like Utopia can be filled with bigotry as well as saintliness.

GIRZONE, JOSEPH
JOSHUA AND THE CHILDREN
An unusual and attractive young man comes to a village torn by partisan strife and immediately captures the hearts of the children who then carry the message to the adults. First in a series.

GODDEN, RUMER
IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE
A successful career woman in her 40s renounces the world to enter a Benedictine convent.

GREGORY, PHILIPPA
THE WISE WOMAN
Growing up as an ill-used apprentice to Morach, the much-feared wise woman of the moors, Alys finds respite by joining an order of Catholic nuns.

HESSE, HERMANN
SIDDHARTHA
The young Indian Siddhartha endures many experiences in his search for the ultimate answer to the question, what is mankind's role on earth. An allegory that examines love, wealth, and freedom while the protagonist struggles toward self-knowledge.

HOWATCH, SUSAN
GLITTERING IMAGES
This, the first in the "Church of England" series, takes place in pre-World War II England, just after Edward VIII abdicated to marry the divorced Wallis Simpson. The event is emblematic, for this novel is about marriage and divorce and proper behavior within a religious context.

IRVING, JOHN
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY
This novel, set in New Hampshire in the 1950s and 1960s, is about Owen Meany who foresees his own death and sees himself as an instrument of God.

IYER, PICO
ABANDON
A student at a Santa Barbara college, doing a thesis on the Sufi master Rumi, searches the globe for a secret Islamic manuscript which was supposedly smuggled out of Iran after the fall of the Shah, and which may contain lost poems by Rumi. Effectively presents the Persian diaspora in Southern California.

KALOGRIDIS, JEANNE
THE BURNING TIMES
In 14th century France, Sybille, descended from a group of psychically gifted people and the embodiment of the Goddess, finds that she and her kind come under the scrutiny of the Inquisition.

KARON, JAN
AT HOME IN MITFORD
A dog disciplined with biblical quotations, a new neighbor in pink curlers, and a stranger who descends from the church attic during a Sunday morning service are among the joys and trials of Father Tim, Rector of Lord's Chapel, the Episcopal Church of Mitford, North Carolina. First of a series.

KIENZLE, WILLIAM X.
THE GATHERING
When a friend's cause of death is ambiguous, Father Koesler convenes a reunion with remaining members of a group of old friends who all initially chose religious vocations as a way of life. (Mystery)

LEHAYE, TIM AND JERRY B. JENKINS
LEFT BEHIND: A NOVEL OF THE EARTH'S LAST DAYS
During a routine flight, 100 of pilot Rayford Steele's passengers vanish! Now he and the others left behind are faced with mass chaos and baffling personal loss. First of a series.

L'ENGLE, MADELEINE
CERTAIN WOMEN
The author explores Christian faith, love and the nature of God by framing the delayed maturation story of Emma, daughter of terminally ill David Wheaton, a prominent and much-married American actor, within three subplots.

MACDONALD, JOHN D.
ONE MORE SUNDAY
From a small country church, Eternal Church of the Believer has grown into a huge conglomerate, exuding power and wealth, masking a variety of sins-lust, greed, corruption and murder.

NEWMAN, SHARAN
DEATH COMES AS EPIPHANY
Catherine LeVendeur has entered the Convent of the Paraclete to study and devote her life to God, but Abbess Heloise needs her to find out who is making Father Abelard appear to be a heretic. Set in 12th century France, this story presents a vivid picture of the politics and passions of the Catholic Church during that time. (Mystery)

ORCUTT, JANE
THE FUGITIVE HEART
When the Civil War took away their families and homes, Samantha and Nathan Martin thought their dreams were destroyed as well. Samantha's faith in God and her love for Nathan sustain her through their six years of separation. But can they withstand the test of Nathan's return?

PERETTI, FRANK
THIS PRESENT DARKNESS
Ashton is just a typical small town. But when a skeptical reporter and a pastor begin to compare notes, they suddenly find themselves fighting a hideous plot to subjugate the townspeople-and eventually the entire human race.

PEREZ GALDOS, BENITO
DONA PERFECTA
Dona Perfecta is a devout lady whose daughter is sought by a promising young man, a representative of modernism. A wily priest is her chief ally, and eventually the rival intrigues drag in a host of forces on either side.

POTOK, CHAIM
THE CHOSEN
Best friends Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter live in completely different worlds - One, Orthodox Judaism and the other, Russian Hasidic Judaism. As they depart for college, their strong friendship helps them find their own paths.

RABB, JONATHAN
THE BOOK OF Q
A researcher at the Vatican Library stumbles across the resurgence of an ancient sect, the Manicheans, and tries to decipher their enigmatic prayer which is the key to the destruction of the Catholic Church.

RUSSELL, MARY DORIA
THE SPARROW
In 2021, the Jesuits send a crew led by Father Emilio Sandoz to contact "God's other children" on the planet of Rakhat. As the sole survivor of the mission, he returns to Earth asking himself just what God's plan really is. Followed by Children of God. (Science Fiction)

VAN DYKE, HENRY
STORY OF THE OTHER WISE MAN
Artaban, a priest of the Magi, discerned from heavenly signs that the time was at hand for the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy-the birth of a holy Prince and Deliverer of Man. Hastening to join three fellow Magi for the long journey into Judea, he paused to help a dying man and was left behind to begin his pilgrimage alone, striking out toward misfortune and suffering�or so he believed.

WALTARI, MIKA
THE SECRET OF THE KINGDOM
A story rich in inspiration, adventure and historical pageantry, describing the search for knowledge and certainty to supplement belief.

WEST, MORRIS L.
THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
A British Monsignor investigates the petition for canonization of a man who died before a partisan firing squad in Calabria during World War II. As the investigation progresses, he learns a great deal about the man, his family, the village in which he lived and, especially, about himself.

WILLIAMSON, PENELOPE
THE OUTSIDER
Following the hanging death of her husband by a vigilante group, an Amish woman struggles to make a life for herself and her son on their Montana sheep farm. When an injured killer stumbles onto her land, she nurses the outsider back to health and finds her faith and trust being tested.

ZIMLER, RICHARD
THE LAST KABBALIST OF LISBON
A young manuscript illuminator, fruitseller and secretly-practicing Jew and kabbalist searches for the murderer of his uncle in this novel set during the horrific 1506 Lisbon inquisition.

Last modified: Monday, January 30, 2006 10:13:55 AM