Tinkers

Tinkers by Paul Harding (Belleview Literary Press, '09, $14.95). 

This is a small gem, a magnificent novel for anyone who appreciates beautiful, insightful, poetic writing.  It's endorsed on the front cover by Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping, Gilead, Home) and considering the quality of Harding's writing - that's appropriate.  This is his first novel, and I'm thinking any student he had who read this now fears that they haven't got a chance!!  This is the sort of book that you stop just to look out into space and take it all in.   It starts so compellingly with George Washington Crosby dying in his bed in the home he built.  Helpless, out of commission, in bed, he feels that the walls he'd built, the floors he'd laid, are all falling apart and down into a vortex now that he's not in charge.  Part of his process is going through his past with his epileptic father, and that father's father before him.  So there are three generations and their related characters (all wonderful) resonating together throughout the book.  You'll want to have this book on your shelf always, and you'll be giving it as gifts.  "A rare and beautiful novel of spiritual inheritance..." (Booklist review)