Pray Hard

March 1, 2001
Recalling works by both Han Nolan and Martha Moore, this studiously quirky first novel looks at a small-town Kentucky girl whose contact with an offbeat stranger helps her come to terms with the death of her father, killed the previous summer while piloting a small plane. While her mother is out getting "beautified" at the Clicking Clippers salon, 12-year-old Amelia Forrest opens the door to a born-again ex-convict improbably named Brother Mustard Seed. It turns out that Brother Mustard Seed had met Amelia's father who, as a Baptist missionary, had visited him in prison and showed him the way to the Lord. Now Brother Mustard Seed claims to have had a vision of Amelia's father, telling him to go to Amelia and her mother: "They need your help." Amelia, who narrates, is highly cynical, but her mother decides to "exercise right to be open minded." Meanwhile, Amelia harbors secret feelings of guilt (closing chapters reveal that Amelia is sure that the popper toy she had planted behind his seat had popped out mid-flight and distracted him, causing him to crash). Coincidences mount and Amelia reconsiders her assumptions. She learns to live with questions: being brave, she concludes, means that "sometimes you had to do something without knowing the full reason for doing it." While Walker firmly resolves one of Amelia's quandaries by having her find the toy in question, she leaves the visions and the coincidences open-ended. For all the mannered cast and plot, the conclusion is highly satisfying and accomplished in its deference to readers' imaginations. Ages 10-14.