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Synopsis
Hundreds of thousands of readers have come to cherish Sophy Burnham's glorious A Book of Angels and Angel Letters. Now, in her deeply moving new novel, The President's Angel, Burnham weaves the divine grace of angelic apparition into a compelling parable of politics, passion, and the world on the brink of annihilation. Matthew Adams is the popular, vital President of a United States in crisis. Wars rage in scores of countries around the world. Drought and famine spawn violence. Weapons of mass destruction tempt mad generals to engage in the final confrontation. Fear and despair clamp a stranglehold on the spiritual life of America. In a world gone mad, the human race sullenly awaits its doom. And then the angel appears to the President - not just once, but on three separate occasions. Each time, the President experiences the rending joy and anguish of receiving God's messenger. Each time, he tries to hide from the responsibility, as well as the effulgence of glory, to deny its truth, for to accept the vision will destroy the very precepts upon which his life is built. As the President's Angel reaches its spellbinding climax, Adams gropes to understand the luminous wisdom of his angel even as mankind's final hope falters on the abyss of total, irredeemable darkness. A novel about the eternal dualities of salvation and despair, joy and terror, love and brutality, The President's Angel unfolds in a great, uplifting rush of inspiration. Sophy Burnham has heard the laughter of angels and fathomed the dark mysteries of the human heart. In The President's Angel, she has given us a work to treasure in our minds and hearts.
Publishers Weekly
Burnham's bestselling nonfiction titles A Book of Angels and Angel Letters and her novel, Revelations , proved there is a craving for inspirational literature in a readership outside the confines of the ``religious'' audience. Her new novel, which she calls the third and last in her angel cycle, is both a fable/homily about the way to reach God and a polemic against the immoral use of power--both personal and political--to create conflict. It is set in a futuristic world ruled by two garrison states, the U.S. and the Enemy, aka the Eastern Orthodox, where military weapons are the major currency and the Barbarians on the borders are engaged in unceasing wars. When an angel appears in the White House bedroom of President Matthew Adams, the chief executive is almost unhinged. On the one hand, he wants to aspire to higher purpose. Yet he is committed to ingrained beliefs: ``People love to make war. It staves off boredom.'' Eventually, however, Adams is led to understand the power of prayer, and the novel ends with a glorious epiphanic vision. Burnham is a fluent writer who urges an ethic of individual choice and responsibility. If her short narrative will seem simplistic to some, others in need of spiritual sustenance may accept its transcendental message. (Oct.)