Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout

"I wonder if we are all condemned to live outside the grace of God." Reverent Tyler Caskey in Abide with Me.

I have long wanted to read Elizabeth Strout's second novel Abide with Me , ever since I first heard about it. Strout has been one of my favorite authors since Olive Kitteridge was being passed around a group of reading church friends ten years ago. I was lucky to review galleys of My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible. 

Abide by Me drew me in particular because it is about a minister in crisis whose congregation turns on him when he is most vulnerable. It tests the faith of Reverend Tyler Caskey and that of his church in West Annett, MA.

My husband is a retired clergyman and I saw close up the parsonage experience and the blessings and burdens congregations can be to their spiritual leaders. Strout has a wise understanding of human nature, and it is evident in this book.

Set in the late 1950s, the novel begins with Tyler deep in depression two years after his wife died of cancer, caring for his equally depressed oldest daughter while his mother has taken over his youngest daughter to raise.

"Life, he would think. How mysterious and magnificent, such abundance!" 

Tyler's wife Lauren had lit the room with joy. He marveled how he had been so lucky to be loved by this woman. They married while he was at seminary. And if she was no stereotype of a pastor's wife, Tyler accepted her for who she was. In fact she was the direct opposite of what people expect a pastor's wife to be: Lauren was fashionable and pretty; she loved to gossip and shop and hated the "grim politeness" of the church women; and she had no interest in prayers or even religion. She said, "my God," and dressed wrong, and could not understand why the country roads had no road signs so people could find their way around. (I felt the same way about the lack of road signs when we were at small town church!)

The church had inherited a shabby farm house and sold the more valuable town parsonage, leaving the isolated and decrepit house for their pastor. I shuddered, how cold a thing to do, and yet how typical. It was 'good enough' for the pastor; after all he got free housing, he should be grateful. I know those 'good enough', hand-me-down, low grade, cheap fulfillment of obligations, always with the excuse that the church has no money, even when the parishioners live far better. A man of God and his wife ought to be humble and unworldly!

When Lauren sees the parsonage she cries. Oh, boy, I got that. I once cried too, seeing a run down, small, badly placed house we were to live in after enjoying nine years in a beautiful, well maintained parsonage in one of the best neighborhoods.

Relegated to the smelly and depressing house, Lauren asks to paint the living room and dining room pink. Then the children came, and she loved them dearly, but she hated the lack of money and ran up big credit bills. She missed television and girl friends and having fun, and became petulant and distant towards Tyler.

Hints are dropped about Lauren's past, how she hated her father who used to bathe her and her friends, and how her mother commented that Lauren was wild and unpredictable and they were happy to see her married. Lauren tells her one confidant that she had many beaus before Tyler.

Lauren did not accept cancer and the inevitable early death, but was angry and lashed out. She never liked the church-funded housekeeper, Connie, and banned her from the house.

Tyler liked Connie's quiet demeanor. After Lauren' death, Connie becomes important to Tyler, who depends on her to keep the house going. He has lost his joy and is just going through the motions. He fails his daughter Katheryn, who stops talking and acts out in school, her hair always knotted and unbrushed. Her teacher actually hates the child. Meanwhile, Tyler's mother is pushing a woman upon him and holds his youngest daughter hostage.

Tyler is humble and determined to be meek and always above personal feelings and bias. Women in the church turn against Tyler, feeling slighted by his lack of attention and safe distance from church politics. Connie turns up missing, accused of theft, and the rumor network starts buzzing that Tyler and Connie were involved. The people turn vicious. And I have experienced what it is like when congregants talk about the pastor behind closed doors, and stare coldly at him in public, feeling righteous, judging and unaware of their own sin in judging.

When Tyler finds Connie, she confesses acts which she has done out of love but which are considered heinous by social and moral law. Tyler has also been struggling with guilt. He forgives Connie. Can he forgive himself?

"They need to go after someone, especially when they sniff weakness under what's supposed to be strong," Tyler is told.

When Tyler reaches the end of his rope and can no longer pretend he is in control, grace comes in unexpected ways.

In the Notes, Strout says she was interested in story, not theology: how does on live life? Does it matter how one lives?  "I can only hope that readers will not only be entertained by the stories I tell, but be moved to reckon with their own sense of mystery and awe," Strout ends. "Through the telling of stories and the reading of stories, we have a chance to see something about ourselves and others that maybe we knew, but didn't know we knew. We can wonder for a moment, if, for all our separate histories, we are not more alike than different after all."

And that I what I adore about reading Strout, that connection that she offers with love and sensitivity, the universal human experience of wounded people discovering how to live.