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Evans, Richard Paul ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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LOOKING GLASS
Evans, Richard Paul
1999 6860 ABOUT THE BOOK Looking Glass FROM THE PUBLISHER When I started to write The Looking Glass, I intended to create a story about the healing power of hope and love. But as this story developed, a message began to emerge that I had not foreseen, a message about the distorted mirror in which we view ourselves, binding ourselves with shackles of self-doubt and fear. The Looking Glass is aptly named, for it is about seeing the reality of ourselves: to see a true reflection of who we are. It is the story of Hunter Bell, a Presbyterian minister turned gambler, and the founder of a gold camp named Bethel. (Which you may remember was Esther's hometown in The Locket.) He is running from the bitter memories of his past, his ministry, and ultimately, from his God. Venturing into a blizzard to chase away wolves drawn close to his cabin by hunger, Hunter finds a beautiful young woman in the snow, wounded by the wolves and half dead with the cold. Her name is Quaye McGandley, and she is an Irish woman sold into marital slavery to a brutal husband who then brought her to America against her will. As Hunter nurses her back to health, he finds that his tender ministrations to Quaye have opened his heart to his greatest fear -- that he might love again. It is my hope that you, and those with whom you share my book, might through its message better see the divinity within yourself and the reality of who you are: worthy of love, gentleness, and grace. With hope, Richard Paul Evans FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly Heartfelt but hackneyed, this ponderous new novel by the author of The Christmas Box carries heavy doses of spirituality. After "Presbyterian minister turned prospector and gambler" Hunter Bell is run out of Goldstrike camp (aka "Sodom West") in 1857 by a vigilante group that suspects him of cheating at cards, he strikes it rich in the Oquirrh mountain range in western Utah. Despite his material fortune, Hunter remains unhappy, haunted by the death of his wife back in Pennsylvania. (When his prayers for her recovery went unanswered, Hunter headed west "in search of gold instead of God.") "How quickly it is forgotten that Midas's gift was a curse, not a blessing," he reflects in one of the journal entries that precede each chapter. The chance for a new life comes when he discovers Quaye Mac Gandley unconscious in the snow, surrounded by wolves. Quaye has had a terrible time. At 14, she was sold by her impoverished father in Ireland to the American adventurer Jak, whose activities include murder, attempted rape, extortion, abduction, pimping and wife beating. We know Quaye and Hunter are right for each other since they share a love of literature, especially the sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The two tormented souls slowly recognize their mutual need via several incidents laden with homilies. Hunter eventually reaches a new, gospel-inspired level of understanding. "The measure of a person's heart, the barometer of good or evil, was nothing more than the extent of their willingness to choose life over death... the path of God was, simply, the path of life, abundant and eternal." In spite of wooden characters, pervasive platitudes and a predictable plot, this "story of redemption" will undoubtedly find its audience. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group 0-684-86781-8 / 9780684867816
Hardcover very good New York, NY
Price:
17.42 USD
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Timepiece
Evans, Richard Paul
1996 10000214 April 3, 1912. "Is this life, to grasp joy only to fear its escape? The price of happiness is the risk of losing it." So reads one of the many wise entries in David Parkin's diary in Timepiece, which traces the miraculous lives of David and his wife MaryAnne as they discover the power of love, loyalty, forgiveness -- and a long-forgotten keepsake that will change the fate of their family for eternity. Like the titular treasure chest of Evans's bestselling The Christmas Box, the eponymous timepiece-"a beautiful rose-gold wristwatch"-of this heart-plucking prequel fairly vibrates with sentimentality. Readers of the former novel will recall how the author met aged widow MaryAnne Parkin and learned of her deceased husband, David, a successful businessman, and how their infant daughter, Andrea, died a tragic death. Here, Evans traces events some 80-odd years back to tell this family's story, but not before recalling the eve of his own daughter's wedding, in 1967, when he presents her with the wristwatch, given to him by MaryAnne. Fragments of David Parkin's diary, dated 1908-1918 and set in Salt Lake City, weave evocatively throughout the author's account of the Parkins' courtship, marriage and family tragedy. At the thematic center of the tale lies the timepiece, bequeathed by a wealthy widow to David's friend Lawrence Flake, a black man who repairs clocks. Events force Lawrence to kill another in self-defense; fearing for his friend, David tells police that he fired the shot, and is exonerated. In revenge, the dead man's friends set a fatal fire at the Parkin house and steal the symbolic timepiece, which will come back to the Parkins only after an extraordinary act of kindness and forgiveness by MaryAnne. Evans has a more ambitious tale to tell here than in The Christmas Box, and he generally carries it off with aplomb, though the dark events of the central story and an unabashedly sappy wedding-eve coda don't quite mesh. The nation's supply of Kleenex is bound to deplete after this hits the bookstore shelves! Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group 0-684-83798-6 / 9780684837987
Hardcover w/book jacket New Riverside, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Price:
15.35 USD
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