Charlie Can’t Sleep!, Rachel Joy Welcher, illustrated by Breezy Brookshire. IVP Kids (ISBN: 9781514010013) 2025.
Summary: A child’s bedtime fears prevent him from sleeping until his mom reminds him that God never sleeps and will care for him.
Houses make strange sounds at night. Is there a robber trying to get in? A werewolf? Or is the house going to be swallowed up in a sinkhole? Charlie has all these thoughts. He’s terrified. He does all he can do to stay up with Mom and Dad–even extra chores! And when Mom and Dad get ready to leave for the night, he wails…and tells them why he can’t sleep.
Then mom reads to him from Psalm 121. She reads “he who watches over you will not slumber.” Charlie asks, “What’s slumber?” Then Dad explains slumber means sleep and Charlie figures out that God never sleeps. Therefore, God is awake and watches over Charlie when he sleeps.
But Charlie still feels alone at night. However, Mom has felt this and explains how prayer helps. And Charlie prays all his fears. Next thing we know, Charlie is sleeping with his dog at his feet.
This is a wonderful book for children (or adults!) with night fears. Mom and Dad take his fears seriously and he gets to name them all. But there is no shame. Rather, just a parent who shares what has helped her. Charlie learns to trust God’s promise from Psalm 121 and turn his fears into prayers.
Breezy Brookshire’s illustrations visualize Charlie’s fears, but in an atmosphere of warmth, tenderness, light and peace. An author note informs us that this story reflects Rachel Joy Welcher’s own childhood experience.
This is a story, as the dedication says “for anyone who has ever been afraid of the dark.”
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
Mark Twain, Ron Chernow. Penguin Press (ISBN: 9780525561729) 2025.
Summary: Beyond literary greatness, the complicated, brilliant, tragic, and sometimes eccentric life of one of America’s greatest writers.
The United States has produced no one like Mark Twain. From printer’s devil to riverboat pilot to prospector. A prodigious writer, a globe-circling lecturer, and a businessman deluded by an over-estimate of his own shrewdness. A loving husband devoted to Livy in a once-idyllic household, that by degrees grew both toxic and tragic for two of his three daughters. And a colorful old man with eccentricities that most of us today would consider “creepy.” The reader who embarks on this 1000-plus page journey will find all this and more in Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain.
Chernow traces the youthful and early adult experiences of Twain, so formative both for his major works, and of his character. We learn of the poverty that Twain sought to escape by one get-rich scheme after another. The death of his brother Henry on a riverboat explosion filled him with both grief and guilt. Then there is his older brother Orion, who helped him early on but who wandered aimlessly through life, assisted by Twain even when Twain couldn’t afford it.
Then Chernow describes an idyllic period, when Twain’s writing and lecturing career begins accruing the fortune for which he hoped. Added to this, he married into wealth when he married Livy Langdon. In the years that followed three daughters followed, growing up in a spacious Hartford home that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
They lived a lavish life at home and on the road, sustained in part by Livy’s fortune, but actually beyond their means. Twain sought to correct this in business ventures. Chernow traces a painful downward spiral, first of a publishing venture, and then the money pit of a failed typesetting machine. Twain so encumbered the family funds that it would be necessary to declare bankruptcy.
Twain would eventually work his way out of debt by writing and speaking but at a terrible cost. The family escaped to Europe for nine years to escape debtors and reduce costs. Relentless travel exacerbated the heart condition Livy suffered from. And Twain was emotionally unavailable and physically separated from his oldest daughter Susy, who was lesbian at a time this could not be spoken of. Twain, for all his “edginess” was pretty conventional when it came to matters of sexuality. Susy died while he was in Europe and he forever blamed himself.
Things could have been far worse for Twain, had he not received the help of Henry Rogers, A Standard Oil executive who helped get Twains finances on a sound footing. Chernow’s account makes him out to be both shrewd and selfless.
Livy’s worsening health combined with Twain’s youngest daughter Jean’s epilepsy left Twain a man besieged. In addition, a life of cigar smoking was beginning to take a toll on his own health. All of this opened the door for him to be taken advantage of by two assistants, Isabel Lyon and Ralph Ashcroft. Before marrying Ashcroft, it was clear Isabel had a strong emotional attachment to Twain. She worked for paltry wages, managed household and administrative tasks, and gained an unhealthy influence. She succeeded in exiling Jean to a series of asylums. Ashcroft also mishandled funds. The two were dispelled only when middle daughter Clara stepped in. Sadly, Jean was only briefly restored to the Twain household before she preceded him in an untimely death.
Chernow also offers an extensive account of Twain’s fascination with young girls, his “angelfish.” He formed a club for them with a special room in his house. He wrote endearing letters. While there is no evidence of any abuse, it was troubling strange, harking back to a youthful romance.
Finally, Chernow explores Twain’s religious views. He had little tolerance for conventional Christianity, to Livy’s dismay and the eventual erosion of Livy’s faith. Late in life, he wrote more openly about his skepticism. One wonders how much went back to his brother Henry’s death, as well as the other tragedies he experienced. This makes all the more extraordinary the long friendship with Hartford pastor Joseph Twichell. One wishes you could overhear some of their conversations.
I had mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, Twain, even at his most eccentric is a fascinating subject for a biography. But for the first time in reading a Chernow biography, I felt myself asking, ‘how much longer must this go?” This was most notable in the case of his business woes. I wanted to grab Twain and shake him and suggest that he ditch all this and write and lecture and just make rather than lose money. But one also felt this in the account of Twain’s relationship with both Susy and Jean and his entanglement with Isabel Lyon. All this was painful, but it also felt drawn out. Likewise, I found this so with Twain’s relationship with the “angelfish.”
This all needed to be there but I felt it overshadowed Twain’s writing. It’s not that Chernow didn’t chronicle that and assess Twain’s various works. But it seems that in this account, I felt the writing life just punctuated Twain’s private life and business ventures. I can imagine other readers might think differently!
All in all, this is another of Chernow’s landmark biographies. I suspect the challenge was the sheer plethora of documentary resources in Twain’s journals, letters, manuscripts, and other historical sources. Given that, it is perhaps a miracle that he was able to reduce all this to a thousand pages! Through all that, he succeeds in helping us appreciated the complicated and unique greatness of Samuel Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain.
___________
Thanks for visiting Bob on Books. I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]
Summary: A pastor imagines what Jesus would want to talk about with Christians in the present moment.
Regina V. Cates invites us to imagine Jesus in conversation with his followers today. She believes he would talk about the abuses of power toward the marginalized and how the church ought love these “neighbors.” Cates thinks he would have a problem with our dogmatic judgementalism toward the “other.” Divisive and corrupt political leadership would deeply disturb him. Jesus would wade into issues we don’t talk about in polite society: sexuality, racism, abortion, toxic masculinity, and more.
Then Cates proceeds to have that conversation in a hard-hitting series of chapters addressing different topics. She pulls no punches, beginning on LGBTQIA+ issues and the church. Cates gets personal, sharing her own painful journey of realizing she was lesbian from an early age in a fundamentalist church. She was sexually assaulted by a sitter and later by a counselor her parents took her to in an effort to “change” her. She was told all such persons are going to hell. No one saw her as a person to be loved. She recounts her own experience of emotional healing in an Inipi sweat lodge. In subsequent chapters, she challenges what she sees as the dogmatism that undergirds what she understands as ancient and misinterpreted texts. She argues that to be religious and moral are two different things.
She describes her remarkable relationship with Byll, an atheist who is one of the kindest people she has met, and who showed her loving acceptance. Then she challenges the “better than arrogance of Christians, challenging us to get ego out of the way. However, all relationships are not like this. Rather, there are times when we must discern when to turn the other cheek and when to responsibly stand up.
She moves on to address other hot-button issues. For example, she argues that “men of quality respect women’s equality” and bluntly addresses sexism and patriarchy and toxic masculinity in the church. This includes male responsibility in matters of sex. She also challenges the church’s complicity in racism and all the ways we try to deny this is a problem. Nor does she mince words about political corruption and our need for leaders of integrity.
Finally, she explores what it means to be a church that embraces all members of the human family. This includes becoming places that create secure settings for the healing of trauma. Ultimately, this means becoming places where we love as Jesus loved.
While I would respectfully differ with the author in my understanding of some biblical texts concerning human sexuality, it broke my heart to read of her experiences in her fundamentalist church. No interpretation of scripture or dogma requires or justifies how the church treated her or what they taught.
Likewise, it saddens me that so many former fundamentalists and evangelicals are writing books like this. In a way, it makes the author’s point that there is a conversation Jesus wants us to have. For example, I grieve that so many men have treated women so badly. As Cates observes, true partnership in ministry does not diminish men. Rather, such men are the real superheroes.
Finally, is this the book to read about the real conversation the church needs to have? While there is much I would affirm in this book, it felt like I’d read this book before and for me, it did not break new ground. That said, this book certainly could spark needed conversations for those open and honest and secure enough with each other to have them.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino. Mariner Books Classics (ISBN: 9780156439619) 1982 (first published in Italian in 1979).
Summary: A reader purchases a book only to find most of it is missing and seeks the rest of the story.
Imagine you have just visited your favorite bookstore and spot an intriguing book, If on a winter’s night a traveler. You get home, curl up in your easy chair, get drawn into the story and then find the remaining pages are scramble and cannot read any more.
And so you go back to the store to exchange it for another copy. While there, you meet a fellow booklover, Ludmilla, looking for the same book. The books are replace but you find it is a different story by a different author. You and Ludmilla team up to track down the conclusion of the story and your quest takes you through lit seminars, a love affair, an encounter with a scam translator, a book fraud conspiracy, and a frustrated author. An each of the “replacements” is the beginning of a different story, written by different author in a different genre.
That’s Calvino’s novel in a nutshell. After an opening chapter on the nature of reading, something we readers rarely reflect upon, the “story” proceed by first addressing you, the reader, and the lead protagonist in the “frame story” followed by the broken-off story.
Toward the end, a character strings together the titles of the ten stories, discovering it forms a kind of a sentence:
If on a winter’s night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave— What story down there awaits its end?—he asks, anxious to hear the story.
What to make of all this? To begin with, Calvino makes the reader the real protagonist. So often, readers are anonymous in the background. Instead, Calvino’s readers quest for stories, really the story. And might that be the case in our world? Is the real story what we make of and how we connect the various pieces of stories?
Alternatively, I wondered if Calvino simply found a way to string together ten stories he couldn’t finish! If so, it was among the most successful cases of writer’s block in history!
Perhaps Calvino meant a wake-up call to the indifferent or jaded reader, addressed in his opening;
“It’s not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences, from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you…”
To read Calvino, at least this story is to evoke a reaction. Either you throw the book across the room with disgust. Or you become engrossed with this quirky, somewhat absurd tale around the ten stories. And perhaps that’s what Calvino wanted.
The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard de Chardin. Harper Perennial Modern Classics (ISBN: 9780061632655) 2008 (first published in 1957).
Summary: A synthesis of evolutionary thought and teleology culminating in a collective consciousness or Omega Point.
I recently reviewed (https://bobonbooks.com/2025/07/21/review-the-divine-milieu/) de Chardin’s The Divine Milieu in which de Chardin traces our growth in godlikeness toward the end of Christ uniting all things in himself. In that book, de Chardin attempts to integrate an understanding of evolution with Christian ideas. De Chardin wrote The Phenomenon of Man a decade later. In it, he elaborates his ideas about the evolutionary processand its telos in a uniting of all conscious, the noosphere in what de Chardin calls “the Omega Point.” He was not permitted to publish either book during his life, both being published posthumously in 1957.
The work is divided into four books. The first describes the origins of the material universe. One of the most important ideas running throughout this work is the inner and outer energies, mind and matter, that constitute all matter. The outer included crystallising and polymerising material.
The second book traces the transition of this material to living organisms from single cells to the expansion of life. He argues that this is not a random process but reflects the working of the inner “mind” through outer matter. Furthermore, life develops increasing complexity in “the tree of life” until the rise of consciousness in hominid.
Then book three traces the development of thought within the human race. Not only are humans self aware, but they also convey their knowledge to others. For de Chardin, this network of shared though results in a thinking layer, or noosphere, that encircles the earth. Consequently, humanity is heading toward a decisive turning point or choice, either toward stillborn destruction or to emergence as a kind of “supersoul.” Our collective consciousness culminates in a new level of existence.
Finally, in book four, de Chardin describes this new level of existence as “the Omega Point.” All the consciousnesses will become singular. Science, technology and religion will come together. Our instincts to survive and to love will come together.
A few observations. One is that de Chardin is hard to read. He creates words like involution and noosphere. A second is that most evolutionary scientists would reject any idea of a telos for evolution. Finally, for me, the most telling is that while de Chardin skates on the edge of orthodoxy in The Divine Milieu, he goes over the edge in this book from theism to panentheism, what he describes as “God all in everyone.” Gone from this book is the idea of God uniting all things in Christ. Rather, all things are united in the noosphere and evolves into a super consciousness.
I have seen an increase in interest in de Chardin in recent years. I can’t help but wonder if the advent of AI and ideas like Ray Kurzweil’s singularity are bringing de Chardin to renewed attention. Personally, I consider all of this as just one more version of humanity’s penchant for “tower of Babel” projects. I wish de Chardin had stopped at The Divine Milieu. This book is neither good science nor good theology but rather an exercise in speculative and wishful thinking.
___________
Thanks for visiting Bob on Books. I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]
Why I Believe in God, Gerhard Lohfink, Linda M. Maloney, translator. Liturgical Press (ISBN: 9780814689974) 2025.
Summary: A New Testament professor testifies to the reasons for his own faith in God in the form of a memoir.
Over the years of reading various works of New Testament scholarship, I came across the name of Gerhard Lohfink. Lohfink was a Catholic priest and theologian, teaching New Testament exegesis with the Catholic theological faculty at Tubingen. However, I had not read any of his works, having matured in a different theological tradition. Lohfink passed away in 2024. Why I Believe in God was his last book, a kind of theological autobiography and personal testimony to his faith.
This last is important in understanding the book. Rather than offer a formal theology or apologetic for God’s existence, he treats this as a given and traces how he was both formed in and lived out that faith as a priest and scholar. Because of that, the book has a personal feel, that of a man in his last days reflecting over his life. And, unlike some accounts that reflect disillusionment, this reflects gratitude and joy.
He begins quite simply by acknowledging that he believed because of believing parents, considering this a grace of God and his parents’ quietly resistant faith in the face of Nazism. This extended to an assistant priest who negotiated the razor edge of shrewdness and innocence under Nazi scrutiny while forming Lohfink and other youth in the faith. He also attributes a Catholic youth movement group led by Gertrud Koob for a pivotal experience of Christian community.
Through that movement, he came to understand the crucial decision of whether he would serve himself or follow Jesus. Yet he acknowledges that this also implied a lifetime of decisions:
“Probably, in the hour when we ultimately stand before Christ and have arrived completely in the presence of God, we will be astonished to see that the great decisions of our lives were fed by infinitely many daily choices–even by the help and hope of those who have lovingly and faithfully accompanied us through our lives” (p. 28).
For Lohfink, this decision also included the decision to enter the priesthood. He narrates his studies in philosophy at Frankfurt. Then he moved to Munich for theological studies. He describes the “intermission” of these years, discovering great works of music and art that taught him to see goodness, truth and beauty and to long for the eternal to which art pointed. During theological studies, he highlights his studies on the Trinity and on original sin. These two distinctively Christian doctrines are foundational to understanding God’s perfections and purposes in the world.
Lohfink spent a brief period as a priest before his bishop sent a letter opening the way to doctoral studies. It turns out two of his professors recognized in his graduation thesis a calling to scholarship. He speaks of the formative influence of Rudolph Schnackenburg, who directed his research on Luke’s resurrection accounts.
And then came the opportunity to teach at Tubingen, including his studies on community in the early church that led to his decision to leave in 1987. It is striking that he is silent about his role as a deputy of the theological faculty in the exclusion of Hans Kung. However, in 1987, he decided to leave Tubingen to join the Integrierte Gemeinde along with his parents. He offers a summary of his work on biblical community and how this afforded a chance to live his scholarship.
Then he turns to one of the most profound issues for any who defend God’s existence. He addresses the extent of suffering and evil in the world. In the end, he argues that our resolution of these universal realities is a faith decision. No argument can resolve these questions. We must choose between an absurd, godless world, or one that we believe “rests in the hands of God…who knows more than we do and has called us into freedom.”
With that, he returns to the title question–why I believe in God. His ultimate response is the mystery of the Incarnation. It is through meeting Jesus that he believes in God, seeing the face of God in the face of Jesus. He concludes: “But above all I look at Jesus. To him I hold fast. In him I will die.”
So much in this book spoke to my heart, including his conclusion. Though younger, I found many parallels in our journeys. And reading of his work, particularly that on community, led to picking up a couple of his books. I deeply appreciated a scholar who understood his work as being for Christ and the church, and not just the “publish or perish” rat race. This last work leaves me wanting to explore his other works, and with a profound sense of gratitude for his life.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
What Happened at Hazelwood, Michael Innes. Penguin Books (ISBN: 9780140026504) 1968 (first published 1946).
Summary: The master of Hazelwood Hall is murdered shortly after Australian relatives join a manor of people who hate him.
What Happened at Hazelwood is Michael Innes’ version of a country manor murder mystery. One of the unusual features is that the story is narrate by two narrators in three parts. Firstly, Lady Simney, the unhappy actress wife of the murdered Sir George Simney narrates events up to the murder. Then the assistant of Inspector Cadover (no Appleby!) narrates their investigation. Finally, Lady Simney narrates the denouement, an ending that surprises her as well as many readers.
Sir George Simney is the master of Hazelwood Hall, the ancestral country seat of the Simney’s. Sir George is not well-liked and the household an unhappy one. As a young man, he ventured to Australia, surviving an accident killing his brother Denzell, pulling off a swindle of relatives known as the Dismal Swamp affair, and landing back in England as Lord of the manor. His butler Alfred Owden has a son, Timmy, who looks like a Simney. A widowed sister, Lucy, has a son, Mervyn, who could be a twin of Timmy. There is also an unmarried sister Grace, who in cohoots with the local vicar, wants to stamp out sin in the manor. A younger brother, Bevis is also visiting, with his artist son Willoughby.
A fight breaks out among them at dinner, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Australian relatives. Hippias Simney is accompanied by his son Gerard and Gerard’s wife, Joyleen, who subsequently has a flirtation with George. Immediately, a quarrel breaks out about the Dismal Swamp. And later that night, an encounter with the guests results in Albert dropping a tray full of crystal.
Without going into all the doings of the next unhappy day, the household turns in on a snowy night. Then Alfred enters Sir George’s library, bring refreshment as he is accustomed to do when he discovers Sir George dead from a blow to the back of the head. There is a look of surprise and terror on the dead man’s face.
Cadover’s assistant then picks up the narrative. He renders the account of the household’s whereabouts and movements. There are tracks in the snow to explain as well as a pair of boots in Sir George’s safe (and nothing else). The arrival of an old flame of Lady Simney’s in town adds another wrinkle. The problem is, while there are a lot of subjects, the evidence on hand does not clearly point at any of them.
Lady Simney narrates the final part. One more person dies. Timmy reads a letter. Cadover unravels the manner of Simney’s death. All of this is full of surprises for the readers, and for some of the characters.
This book was uncharacteristic for those of Innes I have read. He takes a long time to unfold the plot. I found implausible a number of elements. The change of narrators seemed a bit clumsy. Yet I liked the conclusion. But it just seemed that the plot to get there was not as elegant as other Innes books.
When Work Hurts, Meryl Herr. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514010242) 2025.
Summary: Moving through workplace disappointments and finding healing and hope through Israel’s journey of exile and return.
I’ve reviewed a number of books on vocation and finding work you love. But this is the first book I’ve read to address the uncomfortable reality of when work hurts. Yet for many, their glowing hopes of fulfilling work have ended in disillusionment. You are part of a “reduction in force.” It could be the boss who unpredictably flies off the handle in temper tantrums. Or it can be toxic relations in a work team. Then there are the terrible instances of verbal, physical, or even sexual abuse in the workplace. Finally, in situations stressing productivity over the value of people, relentless hours and stress can result in burnout.
Meryl Herr has experienced many of these in her own work career. In her research as a former director at the Max De Pree Center for Leadership, she has heard many other stories of workplace hurt. In When Work Hurts she names the different wounds people bear from workplace experiences, including the guilt one may feel as a consequence. But she also explores how we might hope again and reclaim a sense of God’s purpose within one’s work. She does this not only through honest discussions of devastating work experiences. She also parallels that devastation with the experience of Israel as Jerusalem is devastated, they are deported to Babylon, make a new life there, and in a later generation return and rebuild. And she follows this story stage by stage throughout the book. and through that, she explores how we can cultivate resilience and hope as we heal.
Herr begins with the devastation of layoffs and firings, when the walls come crumbling down. She explores the experience of displacement, a kind of exile, when one loses a job or is estranged in relationships. Then there is the darkness of disillusionment, the dark nights of the soul when it is unclear what’s next. Herr discusses the everyday faithfulness that seeks peace and the prospering of those around one during such times.
Disillusioned workers often wonder about God’s calling in this “in between” place of displacement. She explores the opportunity this affords to pay attention to God, community, ourselves, and the world around us. Thus, Israel heard God’s call to return when God raised up Cyrus. Then she gets real practical in terms of staying on task in our job search, not unlike the exiles who needed exhorting by Haggai to redouble their efforts in rebuilding God’s house. Part of moving through work hurt is making sense of it all through seeing a bigger picture. This includes job crafting, seeing one’s calling within work, and seeing one’s work within God’s redemptive story.
Yet sometimes, workplaces may still be toxic or exploitative. Herr likens this to the ways Israel was opposed as they rebuilt Jerusalem and how they both prayed and armed themselves. In the workplace, this doesn’t mean physical battle but spiritual armor to stand, act with courage and care, pursuing peace where possible and discerning when one must leave. And sometimes, we cause workplace hurt and must own it.
Through it all, Herr challenges us to remember hope through remembering God’s faithfulness to us and God’s promises in scripture. She also bids us to remember the new Jerusalem, where we will work with unending joy.
Each chapter includes real life stories of both disappointment and how people pressed through to hope. Each chapter also concludes with a “Work Hurt Clinic” helping the reader or groups reflect on their own experiences in light of the chapter. They identify symptoms, causes, pain, and ways to experience care.
This book is a welcome addition to the collection of marketplace books. Where others touch on workplace hurt, Herr looks it in the eye, naming all the forms it can take. Furthermore, Herr shows the way of cultivating resilience, not by pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. Rather, she treats workplace hurt as a call to ground ourselves more deeply in “exile faith” and in the God who “makes a way out of no way.”
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
Peril at End House(Hercule Poirot, 8), Agatha Christie. William Morrow (ISBN: 9780063376014) 2024 (First published in 1932).
Summary: “Nick” Buckley has several “accidents” which Poirot believes are attempts on her life by someone in her inner circle.
Poirot and his old friend Captain Hastings are united for a stay at a Cornish resort. During an encounter with a young actress, Magdala “Nick” Buckley, something buzzes past them that they take for a wasp–until Poirot spots a hole in Buckley’s hat and a bullet on the ground. Then she confides that this is the latest in a string of “accidents.” Poirot suspects there is more to them than that. And his investigation confirms his fears, though Nick seems determined to defy death. Poirot believes someone in her inner circle is trying to kill her. In typical Poirot fashion, he takes on the mission of defending the lady and finding the murderer.
The inner circle are gathered around End House, the property Nick has inherited and struggles to maintain–a house with a questionable history. Charles Vyse is the lawyer cousin who arranged a mortgage for her to keep the house. She is hosting several friends. Her closest is Freddie Rice, a wife in an abusive marriage and closet cocaine user. Jim Lazarus, an art dealer is in love with Freddie. He also offered to buy a painting from Nick well above market value. Captain Challenger is a military officer with affections for Nick that she has indulged but not returned. Mr. and Mrs. Croft are transplanted Aussies renting a nearby lodge. They encouraged Nick to make a will before surgery six months earlier. They mailed it but Charles claims it was never received. Finally, there is Ellen, the housekeeper, who closely watches all the goings on at End House.
Poirot suggests Nick have the company of a trusted friend. Nick invites her cousin Maggie, a minister’s daughter. Shortly after her arrival, Maggie hosts a garden party. At one point, Maggie borrows a scarlet wrap of Nick’s. Masked by fireworks, gunshots take her life. Meanwhile, Nick had absented herself to take a phone call.
Next morning, Poirot notes the story of the death of a wealthy airman, Michael Seton. He surmises that Nick was his secret fiancée and stood to inherit the flyer’s wealth. So, for her safety, Poirot arranges her seclusion in a sanitarium with no visitors allowed. Yet somehow a box of chocolates laced with cocaine gets to her and she nearly dies from an overdose. The card said they were from Poirot.
Motive, and the contents of the missing will from Nick are on his mind. Freddie seems a prime suspect, having sent chocolates. And she is a cocaine addict. But Poirot is not so sure. So he stages a gathering at End House after Nick’s will turns up. The “official” word is that Nick died from the overdose. There will be a reading of the will. Poirot then suggests a seance, with Hastings as medium. And here, Nick stages her ultimate performance, triggering all sorts of mayhem and the exposure of the murderer.
To sum up, I thought this one of Christie’s near greats. The ingenious plot leaves you guessing and scratching your head and asking at the end, “why didn’t I see that?”. But we’re not the only ones, as you will see.
__________
Thanks for visiting Bob on Books. I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]
Summary: A conservative case, arguing the spirit of religion and liberty are mutually necessary and best defended by conservatism.
One of the sad spectacles of our current American politics is the weaponization of religious liberty. One political party uses fears over erosion of religious liberty to mobilize the religious, especially Christian, portion of its base. Others, fearful of the hegemony of a particular religious outlook, advance ideas of confining religious liberty to worship and personal devotion, creating a public square devoid of, and in some cases hostile to religious conviction. Sadly, the one thing all this has in common is fear, which has become a powerful driver of political rhetoric at the expense of harmony in our body politic.
John D. Wilsey argues in Religious Freedom that two spirits have shaped our national life from the nation’s beginnings. One is a spirit of religion. The other is a spirit of liberty. He believes both are necessary for our national life. Furthermore he contends that classic, Burkean conservatism offers the best prospect for sustaining the harmony between these two spirits.
He begins his argument by seeking to define what is conservatism. He acknowledges the contention between those who would claim this label. There are those who emphasize the permanent, sometimes inflexibly so, and others, who recognize the inevitability, of and even need for, change. However, Wilsey contends that a Burkean conservatism holds both the permanent and the evolving in a tension that moves with caution that is neither reactionary nor Utopian.
Wilsey then proceeds to unpack this conservatism under the categories of imagination, nation, ordered liberty, history, and religion. Imagination supports human dignity. In addition, it enables the forming of conscience through the embrace of the good, the true and the beautiful. Then, Wilsey considers the idea of nation, and how love of one’s nation, a proper patriotism, differs from an aggressive, ideological nationalism.
But how are order and liberty related? In chapter four, Wilsey proposes that order, particularly our constitutional order, precedes liberty. Specifically, order creates the conditions for our private and public life, including our religious life, to flourish. In turn, our religious life, ideally, points people to the highest goods. Therefore, liberty is guarded from turning into license and order into authoritarianism.
Likewise, history and tradition play a vital role in conserving the twin spirits of religion and liberty from generation to generation. They guard us from a rootlessness, seeing society, as Burke did, as a contract between the dead, the living, and the yet to be born. They offer wisdom, helping us understand when a tradition has outlived its time while guarding us from amnesia.
Finally, religion plays a crucial role in navigating the tension between permanence and change. It does so by defining the permanent things. the morality common to all people, everywhere through time. Religion helps us know where we may compromise and where we must stand.
In concluding, Wilsey asserts his thesis that true conservatism is best positioned to preserve the spirit’s of religion and liberty in our country. He reminds us that this goes deeper than politics:
“The aspirational conservative is prepolitical. The one possessing a conservative disposition aims for a higher moral destiny for persons and societies, guided by the light of permanent things, tradition, and just order. He also understands human fallibility and the real world. He reckons with the human condition marked as it is by limitation, imperfection, and change. the moral profit and ordered liberty of the human person is the primary disposition of the conservative disposition” (pp. 219-220).
Wilsey argues that this kind of conservatism may best build on our foundations of religion and liberty without losing the rich inheritance we have received.
I would love for those who embrace the label of “conservative” to read this “primer.” Likewise, religious leaders may find value both in Wilsey’s apologetic for the importance of religion in our national life, and its proper boundaries. Wilsey sets a high standard for both the religious and the political among us. However, I would like to see more exploration of situations where order conflicts with liberty. Sadly, “order” and “permanent things” have been used to subjugate significant portions of our population. It has upheld, rather than resisted, despotism.
Lastly, I affirm Wilsey’s effort as an evangelical Christian, to articulate a thoughtful and rigorous work of political philosophy. Sadly, as Mark Noll argued in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, evangelicals have been noted far more for activism than for thought. That helps explain some of the instances of our misbegotten activism. It is to be hoped that pastors, politicians, and concerned citizens will read this work. Ideally, they will act more thoughtfully to conserve and extend our traditions of religious freedom and civil liberty.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
