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Overview
Lark Summerville’s life has few surprises–and that’s just how she likes it. All she wants is to live out her angst-riddled life in her blue-collar Baltimore neighborhood, punctuated by weekly trips to her local parish, where Lark is organist, and telephone conversations with desperate souls who dial her hotline at 1-777-IPRAY4U.
Then one night, Lark’s home is destroyed by a fire, forcing her out of her comfortable nest and back to the childhood home she has avoided for years. At Stoneleigh House, Lark is surrounded by three very different women: her grown daughter, Flannery; her barely tolerable socialite mother, Leslie; and Prisma Percy, housekeeper and family confidante, all of whom believe Lark was widowed years before.
In this circle of women, Lark’s carefully constructed existence begins to unravel, even as the promise of a new one unfolds. But when her contrite ex-husband shows up, longing to assume his role as Flannery’s father, twenty years after his desertion, Lark finds that she must face her own lies–and her past–before a new life can unfold.
Synopsis
Lark Summerville’s life has few surprises–and that’s just how she likes it. All she wants is to live out her angst-riddled life in her blue-collar Baltimore neighborhood, punctuated by weekly trips to her local parish, where Lark is organist, and telephone conversations with desperate souls who dial her hotline at 1-777-IPRAY4U.
Then one night, Lark’s home is destroyed by a fire, forcing her out of her comfortable nest and back to the childhood home she has avoided for years. At Stoneleigh House, Lark is surrounded by three very different women: her grown daughter, Flannery; her barely tolerable socialite mother, Leslie; and Prisma Percy, housekeeper and family confidante, all of whom believe Lark was widowed years before.
In this circle of women, Lark’s carefully constructed existence begins to unravel, even as the promise of a new one unfolds. But when her contrite ex-husband shows up, longing to assume his role as Flannery’s father, twenty years after his desertion, Lark finds that she must face her own lies–and her past–before a new life can unfold.
Publishers Weekly
Samson, author of The Church Ladies, stakes out her claim as a novelist of distinction for readers who enjoy evangelical Christian fiction but often choke on the pabulum that passes for it. Larkspur Summerville is a 41-year-old paranoid virtual recluse who for 20 years has kept a secret from her family-a secret that now threatens to become her undoing. Raised Methodist, her sanity is partially tethered to playing the organ for St. Dominic's Catholic Church and experiencing the loving friendship of its priests, although Lark admits, "The whole Mary thing unsettles me." Lark spends most of her free time running a toll-free prayer line, 1-777-IPRAY4U. When Lark's house burns to the ground, she is forced to seek refuge with her estranged mother, Leslie, and Leslie's live-in housekeeper and Internet guru, Prisma Percy. Rounding out the household is Lark's hip, artsy daughter, Flannery, a barista at Starbucks, whose sanity is the glue that holds her strange family together. The finely crafted, first-person narratives alternate among the four women, with a short ending chapter from Lark's brother, Newly. Samson occasionally overwrites and is a little heavy on the dialogue, but her prose is mostly excellent, and the characters appealing and compelling. The centerpiece of the novel is its beautiful depiction of faith and fear that avoids canned Christian gospel presentation scenes but is clear in its message. With this offering, Samson places herself in the ranks of the CBA's best novelists, with writing that has the potential to find a general readership as well. (Oct. 15) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.