The End of the Straight and Narrow

August 25, 2008
McGlynn's superlatively crafted, deeply sympathetic debut story collection traces the spiritual agonies of Christians trying to make sense of their faith within the vicissitudes of human nature. “Landslide” takes place in Southern California, concerning two best friends in a Christian college who follow divergent paths, who both seem involved in a deadly highway landslide they witness together. In “Moonland on Fire,” a divorced father of three struggles to keep the peace between his visiting teenaged son and his evangelical girlfriend amid encroaching L.A. wildfires. The last five stories move the action to Houston, Tex., and come together like five facets of one novella, centered around a 15-year-old, Rowdy Jarrett, harboring crushing guilt over his mother, Cordelia, who went blind while giving birth to him and whose health is now deteriorating. As each successive story shifts points of view among the family members, their multipronged predicament moves into more well-defined but perilous territory, amounting to an affecting family parable.