The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance

"In this satire, adultery, real estate, religion and intrigue collide in suburban New England. Reverend Thomas Mosher, the young black pastor of the Pilgrims' Congregational Church ("An Historic Church with a Modern Message") in W - , Massachusetts, has vanished without a trace. Does the rumored affair between Thomas and Bethany Caruso, unhappily married mother of two, provide an explanation? Did Thomas's esoteric final sermon, "The Shapes of Love" (positing that God is an "infinite sphere"), contain a clue? Did the congregation's white, liberal parishioners drive him away? Can people just disappear?". "Bethany and the rest of the congregants grapple with the ensuing crisis. Chief among them: Artemesia Angelis, an unusually pious housewife with a fixation on the Puritan "heretic" Anne Hutchinson; Margaret Howard, the imposing matriarch of a thriving real estate business; and Bobby Caruso, Bethany's husband, whose lack of interest in church affairs is matched only by his wife's disdain for Bobby's "fornicatorium," a hapless, last-ditch attempt to save their marriage.". "As the mystery deepens, Anastas skillfully examines the tensions between New England's competing traditions of political liberalism and provincial small-mindedness, and sketches the passions and prejudices of his characters with a playfully cynical but ultimately sympathetic eye, leaving us with a thoughtful, bittersweet portrait of the modern American soul. "Where do people come from?" Bethany asks at the novel's end. "And where do they go? Who makes a world this unbearable?" Benjamin Anastas's bold, blisteringly funny, and ultimately haunting satire of modern materialism confirms the emergence of an astonishing talent."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.