Heaven Lake : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: An unexpected joy!
Review: What a pleasurable experience, the best $26.00 I have spent on a book in a long time! Please read this book, but only if you like beautiful prose, a suspenseful plot with passion, love and redemption in a fascinating cultural setting, well delineated characters you will never forget, and don't mind never getting your copy of the book back after you loan it to your favorite fellow reader. You will enjoy every page, learn much and feel completely satisfied with Heaven Lake. This book is so indelibly engrained that I am still enjoying it a week after I read it--(I guess that's an extra bonus, proving I'm not losing my short memory yet!)--unlike other bestsellers that immediately fade away.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, thoughtful, fantastic. . .
Review: What most impresses me about Heaven Lake is the generosity of spirit with which John Dalton treats his characters. Rather than pass judgement (didactic, ironic, or otherwise) on the persons who inhabit his novel, Dalton allows the reader to discern for him/herself the merits and demerits of the strategies that various characters--major and minor--employ to negotiate a difficult and complex world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the novel's protagonist Vincent--whose particular brand of self-righteous faith gets stripped away only to reveal a quiet integrity that sustains him through his journey and which reminds the reader that it is the sinners rather than the saints who most understand grace (even when they cannot begin to guess what its ultimate source may be). A wonderful novel.