Book Review - Of Little Faith

A novel by Carol Hoenig - Booktango 2012 - ISBN 9781468900217

In 2005 Carol Hoenig’s first novel, Without Grace, received ForeWord Magazine’s Silver Medal for Book of the Year and First Place for Fiction by the DIY Book Festival.  Jada Press and the New York Book Festival awarded it honorable mentions.  Her The Author’s Guide To Planning Book Events was named finalist by USA Book and Reader Views.

Cover Image - Of Little Faith

Now comes Carol’s second novel, Of Little Faith.  Set in the politically charged and radically alive decade of 1960, Of Little Faith, speaks to the religious intolerance and bigotry that so fills today’s discourse.

Laura wants a baby.  Laura does not want a husband or even a father for her baby.  She wants to simply raise her child on her own independent of traditional definitions of what makes a family.  Creating an ‘out of the mainstream life’ is rarely easy and Laura’s desire for a child of her own is complicated by Eric, her minister brother, Jenny, Eric’s wife who so wants a child and can’t, and by Beth, Laura’s Christian fundamentalist, angry sister.

While trying to decide whether or not to even try to find a man willing to impregnate her and then disappear from both her life and nine months later from the life of the child, Laura must wrestle with her family’s religious beliefs, their collective grief over the recent death of their father, and with the reality that she currently lives in the family home of her childhood.

We learn of the events in Of Little Faith through first person narrations of the four central characters – Laura, Beth, Eric, and Jenny.  Through their voices we discover family secrets silent too long and losses beyond bearable.

Of Little Faith brings the past to the present and leaves its readers marveling that so little has changed in the minds of those who viciously adhere to fundamentalist beliefs.  Set in a turbulent time in which the nation seemed to peacefully strive for social justice in the backdrop of an inexplicable war, this novel reminds us that all too often hatred simmers just under the surface of presumed accomplishment until on a day very much like today it spews forth to inform political agendas and destroy lives.

Author Carol Hoenig masterfully weaves into the narrative in Of Little Faith a sense of triumph that even Beth, Eric, Jenny and yes possibly even today’s political fundamentalists can secure for themselves a sense of redemption and renewal.

Of Little Faith is available electronically from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Apple iBooks.