Life Goes on
LikeSigns and Wonders, the previous book in the popular series featuring Pastor Sam Gardner and the colorful parishioners of the Harmony Friends Meeting in Harmony, Ind., Gulley's fourth installment unfolds through a series of warm, lightly comic anecdotes. Readers will know they're in cozily familiar territory from the get-go, when Dale Hinshaw—the vigilant, long-winded, self-appointed guardian of doctrinal purity—seizes an opportunity to take the pulpit on Easter Sunday (Pastor Sam has laryngitis) and rant for 45 minutes without a single mention of the Resurrection. As the book strolls along, Sam presides over a funeral for a fellow who—oops!—isn't dead, experiences a couple of home-repair mishaps, gets validated for another year of preaching, contracts head lice and bemusedly recounts the antics of his fellow citizens. Tiffany Nagel, the "Sausage Queen," is unmasked as a vegetarian; the town's 29-year-old spinster, Deena Morrison, finally meets her Prince Charming thanks to ringworm; and Dale Hinshaw keeps causing trouble, even for his own wife. By the time December rolls around, Pastor Sam is fed up with every "narrow-minded kook" in town, and it's time for some soul-searching and a re-evaluation of his job as pastor—if those kooks don't get him fired first. This is sweet, homespun storytelling, as comfy and reassuring as warm socks in a wet spring. Gulley's growing number of fans will relish this funny and occasionally hokey novel.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.