Revelations

Having explored heavenly visitations in her nonfiction bestsellers A Book of Angels and Angel Letters , Burnham again turns to religious themes in this well-crafted, highly absorbing novel. As the 1950s draw to a close, Episcopal minister Tom Buckford arrives in Naughton, Va., emotionally and spiritually exhausted by a failing marriage and a personal crisis of faith. Accustomed to ministering to the poor, he now leads a flock of rich, insular WASPs who are horrified by his progressive theological and racial views. A love affair with a member of his congregation restores his joy in living and leads to a direct revelation from God, but a charge of heresy soon forces him to resign from the church. He becomes a missionary, working with Indians in South and Central America until he is murdered by a Guatemalan death squad. Despite its readability, this intriguing study of spiritual bankruptcy--not Buckford's, but that of his congregation and his cynical bishop--seems at times overly reminiscent of A. J. Cronin's Keys of the Kingdom ; Buckford's interview with his bishop, with similar self-consciousness, evokes the Grand Inquisitor scene in The Brothers Karamazov . Yet Burnham's dramatic narrative invests her material with drama, irony and pathos, and provides an inspiring spiritual dimension as well. ( Sept. )