Spiritual quarantine

The tragically prolonged case of Terri Schiavo keeps forcing Americans to articulate the dimensions of the right to die. A Florida court recently ruled that Ms. Schiavo's husband may defy her parents' wishes next week and remove the feeding tube that has kept her alive in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. The details of this case and its massive publicity are unusual, but it raises an issue with broad, unsettling relevance in a culture so enamored of eternal youth, so beguiled by medical technology.

"The Poet of Tolstoy Park," by Sonny Brewer, makes a quiet, thoughtful contribution to the discussion of how we approach death. About a deeply religious man who's been told he'll die soon, it follows, perhaps a little too closely, Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead" about a deeply religious man who's been told he'll die soon. Brewer's novel isn't as good as Robinson's, but there's no shame in that; hardly anyone is better than she is. Besides, Brewer is more specifically interested in how we confront the end.

His novel is based on the strange but true story of Henry Stuart in the 1920s. At 67, Henry is a retired education professor who lives alone in Idaho, enjoying the company of his two grown sons and the local minister. The Rev. William Webb can't coax Henry back to church since his wife died, but they maintain a cordial banter about spiritual matters: "Henry was at ease with his belief" that everyone gets to heaven by his own route, while his minister reminds him to come back to the fold before he can smell the brimstone.

That possibility grows more imminent when Henry's doctor diagnoses him with an advanced case of noncontagious tuberculosis and gives him less than a year to live. There are no viable medical options for him to pursue, and the symptoms are so dramatic that he doesn't bother with a second opinion.

"While Henry was certainly melancholic about dying," Brewer writes, "his own regard for life's end bore an equal measure of intense curiosity." It's an opportunity, Henry immediately decides, to place himself in "spiritual quarantine" and spend his final months in contemplation of what really matters.

This sounds like a month of Tuesdays with Morrie, but it's something more subtle (except for the sometimes stilted dialogue, which reminded me of the dramatic moments in "Star Trek": "I will not face away. I will not hide, nor shall I cringe. But I won't step one step to meet my death.") Brewer, an editor and bookstore owner in Alabama, comes across as a wise, contemplative man, and his debut novel is full of a lifetime's worth of careful thought about how to live well.

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