July 15, 2022
Troubled hearts meet troubled souls. Making a graceful fiction debut, Webster-Hein crafts a soulful novel set in a small Midwestern town. Like Kent Haruf's Holt, Colorado, and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Iowa, Webster-Hein's Esau, Michigan, harbors lives of quiet desperation. It's 1996, and Pastor Robert Glory has ministered at the Esau Baptist Church for 10 years, barely subsisting on a parsimonious salary. Part Native American (his mother is Cherokee, his father White), he is treated like an outsider by his self-satisfied, narrow-minded congregation. One day, he notices newcomers at Sunday service: a 30-something woman with two young children. The woman is lovely, and at the end of the service, looking into her dark eyes, he feels "a rising thrill"--perhaps, he fears, a forbidden temptation. Webster-Hein's narrative unfolds in chapters told from the points of view of her central characters: Robert, 38, who was raised in foster homes and found order and consolation in the church; Susan Shearer, the newcomer, unhappily married to a domineering, possessive man; Randy, her husband, frustrated at his factory job, given to violent rages; Willa, their 9-year-old daughter, who will do anything to make peace at home; and Leotie, Robert's mother, ill and aging, who was left poor, homeless, and helpless after her son was taken from her at the age of 8. Susan, seeing only a bleak future for herself and her children, struggles to live up to her wedding vows in a marriage that sometimes feels "like life without parole." When she unburdens herself to the pastor, he counsels obedience and faith in God's plan. His own faith, though, is wavering, shaken by Susan's questioning and his undeniable attraction to her. "An alarm or a bell," sounds within him, "either warning him of something or waking him up." With characters yearning for intimacy and acceptance, Webster-Hein delicately probes the meanings of family, freedom, and desire. A gentle tale of love and loneliness.
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August 29, 2022
Debut author Hein’s delicate tale of a small town in Michigan centers on a local church, its congregants, and the eventful arrival of a troubled new family. In 1996, Esau Baptist pastor Robert Glory, a 10-year veteran of the church and former foster child, notices the Shearers, a new family among the congregation, and is instantly intrigued. Susan Shearer and her husband, Randy, have recently settled in Esau with their young children Willa and Lukas, and Robert’s casual interest in Susan becomes a forbidden indulgence as Susan slowly divulges the details of her difficult marriage to the increasingly contentious Randy. Hein adds depth and complexity to the otherwise simple and restrained story by telling it from the various characters’ points of view, as Robert wrestles with the demons of an unsettled past and undetermined future; Susan watches Randy steadily succumb to violent rages; and smart, perceptive, nine-year-old Willa watches helplessly as her parents’ marriage fractures and begins to crumble. For the most part, Hein’s eloquent writing and convincing portrayal of the characters’ faith and piety makes up for a fairly anti-climactic narrative. Overall, it lands as a worthy first outing.
September 15, 2022
Michelle Webster-Hein's debut concentrates on five residents of a nondescript Midwestern small town "whose best days were behind it." Robert has been the pastor of the local Baptist church for ten years, yet he remains uneasy with both the unfeeling leadership and the parishioners, who'd never welcomed him as he'd hoped. Friendless Susan, hoping to salvage her struggling marriage, visits one Sunday and sparks an instant attraction with Robert despite her resolution to stay true to Randy, whose erratic, suspicious behavior is deteriorating. Their daughter, Willa, is bright but anxious, sensitive to her parents' moods but too immature to cope with the stress they impart. Robert's estranged, dying mother, Leotie, journeys to town desperately seeking reconciliation and forgiveness from the son taken from her decades ago. Sensing Robert's desire for family and interest in Susan, Leotie arranges a momentous Thanksgiving meal as a final remorseful gesture that changes everything and leads to an inexorable conclusion. The narrators' distinct voices complement this beautifully descriptive, character-driven work contemplating themes of change and doing the right thing.
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