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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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M.D. Russell’s AMAZING FIRST NOVEL

is called THE SPARROW, and it is magnificent! There are over 400 Amazon reviews, which says to me that it hits a lot of people in the heart! (Of course, I don’t spend much time on Amazon, so maybe lots of books have 400 reviews.)

Anyhow, this isn’t light reading….although it grabbed us very early and we kept wishing there were more time to read (we were reading aloud to each other). The characters are whole people about whom you know enough to care what happens. There is a point to it all, so that if you’re serious about life and belief and God and how we treat others, you’re going to be challenged to think deeply.

The premise is that the listeners at SETI have heard music from a nearby star system, and the Jesuits send a mission. The story is set in the period after the mission has failed and a single individual has returned. It is told in flashbacks, alternating between 40 earth years previously and the “present” in 2060.

There is an interview with the author in our edition (paperback, 1996) and she says that she wrote it to explore the beauty and the risk of belief. It does that in spades, and doesn’t offer easy answers. It was hard for me to believe that this was a first novel….it’s a wonderful effort. We have already bought the sequel and will begin reading it tonight!

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/05 at 07:55 AM

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