"Return to Me with all your heart...." --Joel 2:12



Prize-winning author Paula Cappa and I are Goodreads friends; but this particular book was one that I purchased, not a free review copy. Though I'd read some of her short stories, this was my first introduction to her long fiction. It should be said at the outset that the author may not have been well served by the cover art here; I could see it causing many readers to dismiss the book as erotica (or coming to it with that eager expectation and b

"Return to Me with all your heart...." --Joel 2:12



Prize-winning author Paula Cappa and I are Goodreads friends; but this particular book was one that I purchased, not a free review copy. Though I'd read some of her short stories, this was my first introduction to her long fiction. It should be said at the outset that the author may not have been well served by the cover art here; I could see it causing many readers to dismiss the book as erotica (or coming to it with that eager expectation and being disappointed!). However, it definitely isn't that; the plot involves some sexual situations, but they aren't very explicit, and no more so than they need to be.



Our fictional setting here is Horn Island, off the coast of Rhode Island. Artist Kip Livingstone (raised in a Jewish family, but non-practicing) lives alone in Abasteron House, her old family home. She's seeing a psychiatrist who specializes in sleep disorders, because she's plagued by vivid and frightening dreams --and though Dr. Merlin doesn't believe it, her dreams can bleed over into the waking world. A good rationalist, he's convinced that the situation can be explained and dealt with through Jungian psychobabble --but the reader quickly suspects that this won't cut it. Half a continent away in Chicago, our co-protagonist, Roman Catholic priest Raymond Kera, is seeking laicization because of his struggles with celibacy. Events will soon conspire to bring these two oddly-assorted people together. (Meanwhile, we also have a subplot involving Ray's friend and fellow priest Father Garcia, who's also having his own crisis with ecclesiastical authority.)



It's soon clear that Kip's dreams are demonic in origin and that Abasteron House is a battleground between angels and demons, a situation rooted in her peculiar family heritage. Secrets hidden in old books will play a role in unraveling mysteries here. Cappa is clearly extremely erudite in both intertestamental Jewish angelology and ancient and medieval Christian theology --not too many other modern supernatural fiction authors quote both Augustine and Aquinas in the course of a novel. This book also differs from most genre fiction on the market in that so much of it revolves around dreams, which can be phantasmagoric; and the line between the dreams and reality, and the relationship between them, gets very blurry. Ambiguity is an intentional feature of the author's style here (and that element of ambiguity also deliberately extends into the resolution of the various plot strands). Finally, Cappa is clearly a Christian writer (though in its language and sexual content, this is very definitely not ECPA "Christian fiction") who takes both God and Satan seriously. But though two major characters operate in a Roman Catholic context, the author (whom I'm guessing is not Catholic herself) is very critical of the Church's stances on a number of things. This is very much a novel of ideas, though they're worked into the warp and weft of the story (and presented through the mouths of sympathetic characters), not shoehorned in.



For me, the ideas are a mixed bag, and are a major factor in the difficulty of reviewing the book, even after letting it gel in my mind for a week after finishing it. I'm also not Catholic (though I have a number of dear friends, whom I highly respect, who are), and don't hold any particular brief for that denomination. Personally, I have no more use for or sympathy with the practice of forced perpetual priestly celibacy than Cappa does; and like her, I favor the ordination of women for Christian ministry (though I don't view the "priesthood" the same way that Catholics do). But on a couple of other points, where the Catholic Church's stance is simply a reflection of general classical Christian morality, which is classical for a reason, I very strongly disagree with her perspective (though she touches on these only in passing).



Her main message, however, is focused on a different area of theology altogether. Traditional Christian theology holds that eternal punishment of unrepented sin is real, though Christians have differed (and still do) over how this works out in practice. There has always been a strand of Christian thought, however, that has advocated the idea of universal salvation --that nobody will ever be finally damned. (I've known for many years that Origen, in the third century, went so far as to maintain that Satan himself would eventually repent and be saved --and Cappa brings out the fact that a number of early Fathers held the same view.) It isn't a spoiler to say that the heart and soul of this novel is a passionate statement of the gospel (as the author sees it) of universal redemption. That's an appealing position, because no decent person wouldn't wish it to be true. For my own part, though, I'm not able to embrace it --not because I don't wish I could, but because I think darker reality gets in the way of doing so. (One could argue that the fact of free will --if, as I do, you see it as a fact-- is as inimical to the idea of willy-nilly universal salvation as it is to the Calvinist idea of unconditional double predestination.)



Cappa writes some of the most beautiful prose of any author alive today, and that's often in evidence here. Her descriptions of the natural world of sea and shore can be particularly lush and vivid. (She doesn't currently live in New England, but she's familiar with the region and it shows.) There are a lot of original images and phrases here (I'll probably always think of "the fall of noon" when the clock approaches 12:00 p.m.). Kip and Ray are likable characters for the most part (you can like someone in fiction, as you do in real life, without always approving of everything he/she does!) and easy to care about. (I was disappointed in one aspect of Ray's behavior at the end, and would have liked to sit him down for a stern talking to, though I won't share any spoilers; but that's just me.) In this work, the author has produced a serious and substantial novel. It's likely to prove to be one of many from her pen (or keyboard)!