Abide with Me

A charismatic young minister takes a church in a small Maine town in 1959. For several years the congregation loves him, although folks don't ever warm to his wife. But when she gets sick and dies of cancer, and his five-year-old daughter misbehaves at school, and he can no longer memorize his sermons, the congregation begins to turn against him and pretty soon rumors are flowing.

Like the villagers in The Scarlet Letter, Strout's characters backbite, gossip, and hide secret sins. The pastor, whose hero has been Bonhoeffer, and whose desire has been to do grand things for his faith, begins to stumble over these everyday difficulties. By novel's end, however, some of the characters begin to understand grace.