Saint Maybe and Ian's response to challenges - Book Report/Review Example

When it was Daphne's turn, her thoughts reveal how much the children have grown away from Ian and how Ian needs a new center in his life. The book then shifts to Rita, Ian's wife. This family drama of guilt and forgiveness and reconciliation plays out steadily over about 24 years. The family is not ordinary as it appears to be blessed with special things. It starts out as happy and not challenged financially, showing in the end that things can happen to families in whatever state - In the dining room, Lucy bounced the baby on her shoulder while she talked with Bee.

She still had her coat on; she looked fresh and happy, and she smiled at Ian without a trace of guilt. His mother said, 'Ian, hon, could you fetch the booster seats' She was laying a notched silver fish knife next to each plate. The Bedloes owned the most specialized utensils-sugar shells and butter-pat spears and a toothy, comblike instrument for slicing angel food cake. Ian marveled that people could consider such things important. The plot begins with Ian Bedloe, the youngest of a happy family, who drives his brother to commit suicide after telling him that Lucy's baby may not have been Danny's.

When Ian heard the sound of his older brother's car crashing, he knew that he would never again have the same innocent existence. Five minutes before the crash, Ian had revealed something to Danny. This revelation only took 10 seconds and then the car crash which changed Ian's life forever.Danny's wife, Lucy, dies sooner and Ian is left to taking care of the children He had wanted relief from his guilt and so for the next 24-odd years, he devotes himself to being a parent, following the precepts of his church, the Church of the Second Chance.

In his journey with the Church of the Second Chance, whose philosophy is that forgiveness must be earned, he moves through the therapeutic discovery of his own creative abilities.The course he trudges through toward forgiveness--of himself and of Danny and Lucy, whose deaths changed his life so irrevocably - can be said to unjust and senseless if seen from the perspective of society in general. First, Ian is following the advice of the rector and it consisted of leaving behind his college education and lifting the burden from the grandparents.

The pastor Emmett convinces Ian that forgiveness doesn't come automatically. He had taken the advice hook, line, and sinker without weighing matters, even granted that he had caused the death of a brother directly, and the sister-in-law indirectly. Second, conceding that he was the cause, things cannot return to normal even if given his penitence. The idea of penitence or penance craves for a closer look.So, Ian drops out of college, becomes a carpenter and helps his parents care for the three orphaned children.

As the years pass, he carries out the burden of a premature father and mother all rolled into one. As "Mom, Dad, Ian," he lives through life complete with all the difficulties being encountered normally by families - the ups and downs of childcare - often met with the realities of life. One of the grown-up children, Agatha, asked a question and was answered as she had expected -"Can't we go back to having sitters" "No, we can't. Face the facts, sweetheart, we're in the Department of Reality now.

" (Chapter 2, pg. 59)Set in the family home of the Bedloes, the parents of Danny or the grandparents of the children are not qualified to care