Open Heart (1972)
Book Description
The second instalment of the Bebb tetralogy, Open Heart begins with the funeral of the elderly businessman, Herman Redpath, attended by members of his tribe in the luxury surrounds of his own private chapel. Supplied with a sizeable gift left to him in the will, Leo Bebb heads north to Tono and Sharon’s neighborhood in Connecticut, with intentions of founding a new church. What he finds on arrival, however, is that their marriage is on the rocks: Tono’s life as a teacher is unfulfilling, while the homesick Sharon has begun an affair with her husband’s sixteen-year-old nephew, Tony.
Once the transformation of a rented barn into a chapel is complete, Bebb sends out invitations and places adverts in local papers, encouraging all who read them to darken the doors of his new church, Open Heart:
‘Have a Heart – Open your Heart to Jesus. Open your heart to each other. Open your Heart today.’
When the church fails to draw the desired numbers, Bebb is pitched into a state of disillusionment. Disillusionment becomes crisis when his wife, Lucille, disappears, and the search parties cannot find her. Tono’s hunch that she has fled back to Florida leads him and Bebb to journey south in the hopes that she might be saved. Faced with Lucille’s absence, grief at the demise of their life together, and the imminent collapse of his daughter’s marriage, Bebb desperately seeks a source of healing for the family, and for meaning in the midst of suffering.
Reviews
“Open Heart, by Frederick Buechner, is simply wonderful. It's a book to be happy with, for it is enchantingly funny...this is a first-rate novel that can be relished on whatever level you choose…Buechner is more than a good writer; he always has been a superb craftsman and one who dealt with important subjects.”
— Margaret Manning, Boston Globe
“He has composed a very well-written, striking, humorous story. It is a pleasure to read and difficult to put down.”
— Peter Rowley, Chicago Sun-Times
“Mr. Buechner has an engaging comic sense, a firm theological clarity of mind, and a mastery of prose whereby he can get practically any effect in the novelist's bag of tricks.”
— Guy Davenport, National Review
“Good news. Frederick Buechner, who has quietly become one of America's finest novelists, has just published an extraordinary new novel called Open Heart.”
— Michael Putney, The National Observer
“Whenever a writer allows me to enter a new world of imagination, I am grateful. He has somehow performed the magic of creating a story that is even more pleasant to remember than to read. If you do the latter, Buechner will enable you to do the former.”
— Robert Baker, The Christian Century
“Open Heart will ask what we are to do with emptiness and loss.”
— W. Dale Brown, The Book of Buechner
