Solo on a life built for two

"She's getting in the way of the healing," Jordanna whines to herself. Despite years of training and experience, something about June's stubborn sadness threatens Jordanna and scrapes the wounds left by her own failed pregnancies. She resents this young mother's unwillingness to move on, accept God's comfort, and be grateful for her three healthy children.

When June disappears, apparently a suicide, Jordanna finds herself accused of psychological malpractice. "She was in agony," an angry relative confronts her, "and you were throwing little God sugar pills at her. You rely on God to fix everything - that was the whole problem, wasn't it? Instead of intervening the way a professional would have - you just trusted in God."

This is a brutal accusation for Jordanna to endure, but as the investigation begins, her trials diversify. She receives word that her moribund marriage is finally dead, a victim of the sadness she's been able to cover but never cure since suffering two stillborn deliveries.

"Can you look into the future," her husband writes from abroad, "and identify a point in time when you will look at me and not think of loss?" This is an extraordinarily intimate portrayal of the effects of grief on a marriage, the stress of healing at different rates that can tear hearts apart.

But the novel achieves its most remarkable feat with the relationship between Jordanna and her sister Abby. Abby loves Jordanna desperately but also critically, with a sensitive ear for the tones of egotism in Jordanna's self-sacrifice. She can't help being annoyed by the presumptive, manipulative power of her sister's love. "Why, Abby wondered, had she been chosen to suffer the aching desire to nurture this older sister, and the equally maternal, no less fierce, inclination to reconfigure her?" Basch refuses to take sides in this rivalry, but she perfectly captures the grating sound of a sibling's piety.

Despite these plot details, "The Passion of Reverend Nash" isn't Christian fiction in any exclusive sense. The author, in fact, is Jewish, and she uses the tropes of Christianity for a purpose that transcends denominations. The trials Jordanna confronts push her beyond the rhetoric of sermons or the advice of pastoral counseling, and force her to question the redemptive power of tragedy and the depth of her spiritual commitment.

Basch has a cool, witty voice that holds steady even when the scenes she describes convulse with grief. With Jordanna, she's created a character of giant sympathy, desperate love, and the small, ordinary failings that bring us all down. This is a novel that acknowledges the potential for joy even in the bleakest moments, but the author knows such freedom is hard won and that the deepest spiritual wisdom sometimes comes not from the pulpit but straight from the whirlwind.

• Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor. Send e-mail comments about the book section toRon Charles.

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