Book Review: Faith by Jennifer Haigh

Title: Faith
Author: Jennifer Haigh
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: May 10, 2011
Hardcover: 336 pages
ISBN: 978-0060755805
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

It is the spring of 2002 and a perfect storm has hit Boston. Across the city’s archdiocese, trusted priests have been accused of the worst possible betrayal of the souls in their care. In Faith, Jennifer Haigh explores the fallout for one devout family, the McGanns.

Estranged for years from her difficult and demanding relatives, Sheila McGann has remained close to her older brother Art, the popular, dynamic pastor of a large suburban parish. When Art finds himself at the center of the maelstrom, Sheila returns to Boston, ready to fight for him and his reputation. What she discovers is more complicated than she imagined. Her strict, lace-curtain-Irish mother is living in a state of angry denial. Sheila’s younger brother Mike, to her horror, has already convicted his brother in his heart. But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who persistently dodges Sheila’s questions and refuses to defend himself.

As the scandal forces long-buried secrets to surface, Faith explores the corrosive consequences of one family’s history of silence—and the resilience its members ultimately find in forgiveness. Throughout, Haigh demonstrates how the truth can shatter our deepest beliefs—and restore them. A gripping, suspenseful tale of one woman’s quest for the truth, Faith is a haunting meditation on loyalty and family, doubt and belief. Elegantly crafted, sharply observed, this is Jennifer Haigh’s most ambitious novel to date.

My Review:

Faith by Jennifer Haigh is an exceptionally well-written story of Father Arthur Breen, a Catholic priest who is accused of abusing a boy with whom he has worked in his service with the church.  Haigh chooses to tell the story through the voice of Sheila, half-sister to Arthur, in what turns out to be an emotionally-charged, life-changing drama for Arthur who, amidst the allegations is asked to leave the church.  Touching on the very public issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic priesthood, Haigh masterfully captivates the reader with a fictional account of one priest’s struggles with the devastating condemnation accompanying abuse charges all the while learning more about himself through his own family and its responses to his predicament.  I personally found the various responses of Arthur’s family to be very realistic wherein his mother never doubted her son’s innocence yet some of his siblings saw their brother in a different light.  Haigh captures the reader’s attention and builds a level of suspense to this drama that will keep readers turning the pages through to the end.  Faith would make an excellent book discussion group choice and I recommend it to all fans of realistic fictional suspense dramas.

About the Author:

Jennifer Haigh is the author of the New York Times bestseller Baker Towers, winner of the 2006 PEN/L. L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author; Mrs. Kimble, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction and was a finalist for the Book Sense Book of the Year; and The Condition.

Her fiction has appeared in Granta, Ploughshares, Good Housekeeping, and elsewhere. She lives in the Boston area.

To learn more about Jennifer Haigh please visit her website.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the book tour.

I received an ARC of Faith by Jennifer Haigh from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

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