Comfort of Our Kind

This fun debut novel by story writer Stoner chronicles the tribulations of a family caught in a war between good and evil in Franklin Notch, N.H. For Moffat family matriarch and long-ago nun Donica Lenore—known to all as “Sister” —the devil is always near, but that hasn’t stopped her family from enjoying earthly pleasures. Her husband, Wes, is the host of a regional television show and is “notorious for inventing bad history” about the town. Daughter Veronica is a nurse with a weakness for Xanax, son Reggie is squatting in Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World, and the oldest son, narrator Daniel “Boone” Moffatt, is a smalltown police chief famous for capturing the serial killer “Holy Hell.” But now, several weeks before Sister and Wes’s 50th wedding anniversary, one of Wes’s tall tales has snowballed into a land dispute involving an imaginary Native American tribe; the devil is poised to wreak havoc on the family; and each of the Moffat children unwittingly find themselves discovering the missing element of their spirituality. Stoner’s storytelling has a lot of Wes Anderson elements and should find a readership among those into the folksy, absurd and poignant. (Mar.)