Lauren B. Davis is acutely aware of the growing divide in the United States between the haves and the have nots, and has written a novel which tackles this issue and many others with her new novel "Even So". In the novel's preface, she points out the lack of wilful understanding in the privileged of the ever-increasing difficulties of the materially poor, providing the premise of a novel that sweeps through many levels to deliver on many lessons on faith, empathy and love.
She embodies her thesis in her main character Angela, the pampered and vain wife of a successful businessman in affluent Princeton, who volunteers at a food bank in low-income Trenton, in an attempt to ease her own guilt over living with ample means while others struggle to make ends meet. There, she meets Sister Eileen, the strong, but embattled nun who struggles to negotiate with a painful past and fears of a growing chasm with the God to whom she has devoted her life. The two main characters orbit each other, sometimes with tidal pull and friction and other times with genuine affection and appreciation. When Angela meets with traumatic events that alter the path of her life, she turns to Eileen and both women entwine to co-pilot a rocky path towards self-actualization and redemption.
There is much sage wisdom in this novel’s pages, examining the complexities of both sin and faith, but Lauren B. Davis does not pool only from the pages of the Bible. Rather, it draws proverbial wisdom from many texts, Christian and otherwise. Like many of today’s theologians, Lauren Davis did not concentrate on just one faith, but researched many other philosophical and spiritual sources, thusly enriching the book with a broad diversity of thought. Lauren B. Davis considers much, dives deep, and comes up with a wonderful work of gorgeous depth and dynamism. Indeed, it is like a dive that takes you from shallow to deep, with all pressures that mount on the way, and the result when you surface is exhilarating.
The book also plays into the human drama and latches onto the soft but powerful laws of empathy. For example, she negotiates a beautiful assertion on the question of being pro-life on the issue of abortion. With the powerful salve of empathy, Davis maintains that a girl who has gotten an abortion should still feel that God loves her, that she is still valid as a person, not a sinner damned to hell for the murder of her unborn child, as so many pro-lifers would prefer to opine.
As a work of fiction, “Even So'' moves along a mounting pace that builds tension and drama artfully, which has always been one of Lauren B. Davis’s greatest talents. The disaster that befalls Angela takes you by surprise and the moment is inescapably brutal. It is the watershed of the book and of the protagonist’s life as a ruthless consequence of her own vain recklessness. Davis handles this with precision. This is not merely a feel good book, not a flowery perfumed Hallmark production, this is an incisive work of literary fiction.
And though there are many dark and ugly scenes in this book, the light still overtakes the darkness; the light of hope, strength, trust and love. For example, Sister Eileen counsels Angela to remain true to her whole self rather than the parts that she loathes. Later, in a discussion with a superior, Sister Eileen intimates one of the most beautiful lines in the book; that wherever you find your whole self, this is “Where God waits.”. Think of it. God waits where you will find your whole self, blemishes and all.
“Even So” is a book of deep understanding of the world from both spiritual and human perspectives. Although there is much wrong with The Church today, there is actually much more good being done by people that are completely separate from the ones doing the damage. Volumes exist of good words with a great consideration of the spiritual universe and its relationship with the chaotic and fluctuating human soul. These words are not exclusively from a Bible that so many quasi-Christians like to thump. Rather, this understanding comes from something more global and conglomerate than that. Davis pools from this great resource and in turn presents a great, well-thought-out and well rounded novel about faith, sin and the intricate dance between them. In it, we learn that God loves and cares for us with all our faults and blemishes, even so. That human dignity is fundamental in everyone, regardless of who they are, even so.
"Even So" is due to be published by Dundurn Press in September 2021
