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In this moving new novel from celebrated author Nickolas Butler, a Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when one of their own falls under the influence of a radical church.
Lyle Hovde is at the onset of his golden years, living a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence and subsequent estrangement from her parents, Shiloh has finally come home. But while Lyle is thrilled to have his whole family reunited, he's also uneasy: in Shiloh's absence, she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the sick.
While reckoning with his own faith - or lack thereof - Lyle soon finds himself torn between his unease about the church and his desire to keep his daughter and grandson in his life. But when the church's radical belief system threatens Isaac's safety, Lyle is forced to make a decision from which the family may not recover.
Set over the course of one year and beautifully evoking the change of seasons, Little Faith is a powerful and deeply affecting inter-generational novel about family and community, the ways in which belief is both formed and shaken, and the lengths we go to protect our own.
"Starred Review. Breathtaking yet devastating...Butler weaves questions surrounding faith, regret, and whether it's possible to love unconditionally into every page of this potent book...This is storytelling at its finest." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Powerful... [Butler] skillfully handles the complicated - and heartbreaking - psychological and emotional complexities of this story, crafting a deeply moving novel about love, faith, and loss...A beautifully realized meditation on the nature of parenting and living in a perplexing (and often cruel) world." - Library Journal
"Exploring the complexities of faith and family, Butler... also tackles the power and pitfalls of devout Christianity. Fans of Richard Russo and Jan Karon will appreciate Butler's sense of place, which lets seasonal shifts and harvest cycles propel the novel forward. Little Faith is quietly and deeply moving." - Booklist
"The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying." - Kirkus
"A novel as tender and generous as any I've read. It's a three a.m. I gotta get some sleep but can't stop reading sorta book. Heart stoppingly good." - Willy Vlautin, author of Lean on Pete and Don't Skip Out on Me
This information about Little Faith was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: OliveJuiceStudios.com
Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. His first novel was the internationally best-selling and prize-winning Shotgun Lovesongs, which has been optioned for film development and has been translated into over ten languages. Beneath the Bonfire, a collection of short stories, followed a year later. In 2017, he published The Hearts of Men which was short-listed for two of France's most prestigious literary prizes even before its American publishing. In 2019, his fourth book, Little Faith was published to critical acclaim. Butler published Godspeed in 2021, a literary thriller set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming that was longlisted for the Reading the West ...
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