In a polarized world, Nickolas Butler’s third novel, Little Faith, offers a touching portrait of people working to heal divisions.

Lyle Hovde and his wife welcome home their adopted daughter, Shiloh, and her 5-year-old son, Isaac, who need help getting back on their feet. Lyle dotes on Isaac, taking him to neighbor Hoot’s house for ice cream or to the apple orchard where Lyle works in retirement. But when Shiloh joins a radical church in nearby La Crosse, Wisconsin, she pushes her parents away. Lyle, with the help of his mates, must decide how to act when his beloved grandson’s health is in danger.

Little Faith is filled with biblical elements, starting with its bucolic, Eden-like setting, where the Hovde family enjoys togetherness after a long estrangement. Lyle is tempted to savor this fairy-tale scene, but like the apples he tends, the moment doesn’t keep well. Salvation is an open-ended question in this story. Is Lyle saved? Or is it Lyle who saves Isaac? Like a good parable, the novel’s message is worth patient interpretation.

Little Faith resides in a tenuous middle ground between extremes: stoic, agnostic Lyle against the charismatic pastor who attracts his impressionable daughter; Hoot’s unhealthy smoking and drinking habits versus teetotaling church-goers; medical treatment versus faith-healing. Natural rhythms bind these opposites, as the novel is organized by the year’s seasons, and their abiding serenity accompanies the many tensions.

The book’s conclusion is as enigmatic as its title. Little Faith might be diminutive, but it’s far from fragile.

Gretchen has had enough of her husband, Steve. He’s been obsessed with work and emotionally distant for years. She’s sought revenge for his affairs by embarking upon one of her own. Gretchen is ready for a new life.

But before the couple splits, they decide to visit a marriage counselor. With Sandy’s guidance, the couple learns to look beyond the surface of what the other says and examine what’s really happening in their relationship. The time they spend in Sandy’s office requires Gretchen and Steve to slow down, listen to each other and listen to their marriage.

It’s been 37 years since John Jay Osborn’s last novel, and 47 since his debut, The Paper Chase, soared onto the literary scene. That novel followed a first-year law student as he dealt with a professor he both admired and feared. It was ultimately adapted for both television and film. Though decades have passed, Listen to the Marriage shows Osborn is still able to home in on the heart of a story and reveal its characters’ motivations.

Counseling sessions can be revealing, and so it is for Gretchen and Steve. Listen to the Marriage is set entirely in Sandy’s office, where they reconvene each week to discuss the obstacles between them. The novel is a page turner, with the reader thrust into the characters’ most vulnerable moments, and it’s easy to read in a single sitting.

Osborn’s tale focuses on a single relationship, and in doing so, examines the power of empathy and invites readers to consider how they relate to others in their own lives.

The “still life” in Katharine Weber’s new novel is Duncan Wheeler, a 37-year-old successful Connecticut-based architect who receives life’s worst surprise when a car crash leaves him mostly paralyzed with a C6 spinal cord injury. The “monkey” is Ottoline, a female tufted capuchin monkey, close to 25 years old, who arrives from the Primate Institute of New England to help Duncan get used to his new reality. Connecting the two is Laura Wheeler, Duncan’s wife, whose profession as an art restorer at Yale University has made her the perfect person to also delicately restore her husband’s will to carry on.

The idea of a helper monkey at first seems ridiculous to Duncan (and even to Laura), like something made up for a Hollywood movie. But Ottoline proves them wrong almost instantly. Her ability to follow Duncan’s commands brings back some amount of solitude and privacy that he had sorely missed since his accident. Soon the Wheelers also realize that Ottoline’s mischievous nature is somewhat filling the gaping hole left by the child they never had.

But a still life with a helpful and loving monkey is still just that, and Weber expertly weaves Duncan’s internal conflict throughout the novel, constantly making the reader wonder if he will find the strength to continue living in his new circumstances and carry on with a will to make new legacies. Most importantly, Still Life with Monkey begs the question, “What would I do in this situation?” It’s a question that lingers long after the book ends.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Proulx’s second novel opens an incisive window into the seemingly predictable lives of two upper-middle-class families that slowly unravel over one long year, following two calamitous events. Mia and Michael Slate are cruising into middle age—she’s a photographer, and he’s a partner in a money management firm with Peter Conrad, whom he’s known since high school.

At least Michael thought he was a partner, until one February evening when their lawyer arrives at the Slates’ door to tell them that when the company went through a restructuring process over a year earlier, Peter virtually “wrote Michael out” of their partnership. Michael knew his monthly share had been decreasing for a while, but he never looked into the details. Half a million in consulting fees have bypassed Michael and been funneled into Peter and his wife Helen’s personal account. Since Helen and Mia are best friends, and the Slates’ 17-year-old son, Finn, and the Conrads’ daughter have been buddies since childhood, Peter’s betrayal affects each member of both families.

This initiates the first real schism in the Slates’ marriage, for Mia is understandably angry and frustrated with Michael’s failure to monitor what was happening to their bottom line. But that same February evening, a much more tragic event occurs: Finn gets drunk at a neighbor’s party and passes out in the snow, and the temperature that night dips to 30 degrees below zero. He loses a hand to frostbite—and that loss reverberates throughout the rest of the novel. Who is to blame? Who feels guilty . . . and who wants revenge?

Finn withdraws from his parents, “loses” his prosthesis and skips six months of counseling appointments. Mia drifts further away from Michael, emotionally and sexually, and contemplates an affair. Michael escapes from home by means of nightly baseball practices with a homeless youth, an odd relationship that eventually leads to a violent act of revenge against Peter and his family.

Proulx deftly delves into the inner psyches of each of her flawed characters, bringing some level of understanding to their otherwise inexplicably bad choices. Her tale of the downward spiral experienced by these two families seems as real as if we were reading it in the newspaper or hearing it on the local news.

Quick quiz: Which group is larger—Americans who have Nobel Prizes or Americans who have passed the Masters of Wine test? Is that your final answer? At press time, the U.S. sported a mere 47 of the latter, fewer than the number of Americans who have won the Nobel in the last decade. The Masters of Wine roster is the very definition of “elite.”

At the beginning of Ann Mah’s second novel, The Lost Vintage, protagonist Kate Elliott has committed to an extended visit with extended family in Meursault, France, in the hopes of shoring up her knowledge of French wines in advance of her third—and final—sitting for the test. To earn her keep during her excursion, Kate helps her cousin reclaim a cellar storage space that contains several surprises, not the least of which is a World War II-era diary from a great half-aunt named Hélène who has been more or less expunged from the family history. As Kate digs deeper, it appears that her relative may have been a collaborator during WWII, which is a bitter pill to swallow, but she’s determined to uncover the truth nonetheless.

Meanwhile, her erstwhile French paramour Jean-Luc has drops back into her life, and it’s unclear whether his presence will turn out to be boon or bane.

Any of these circumstances could break the concentration—even the will—of a lesser human, but Kate proves to be made of stern stuff, and she delves into the formal, informal and secret history of her family to try to make sense out of Hélène’s narrative, and perhaps to find the key to recovering her family’s pride and fortunes.

Mah’s scholarship and knowledge of French history and viticulture figure significantly in the novel’s storyline, but The Lost Vintage never feels forced or heavy-handed, and her vivid prose unlocks the musty aromatics of a long-abandoned cellar full of secrets for even the least sophisticated of palates. Drink deep.

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and writes about food and wine (and occasionally France) in his blog, templeofthetongue.wordpress.com.

Our past is who we are, even when it’s forgotten.

In Gateway to the Moon, award-winning novelist Mary Morris draws a map straight from the terror of the Spanish Inquisition to stagnant lives in a dirt-poor New Mexico village, half a millennium later.

In 1492, Luis de Torre flees Spain to avoid torture and imprisonment at the hands of fanatical priests. Abandoning his family, he signs on as the personal interpreter of Christopher Columbus, who is sailing west in search of another route to the riches of the Indies. The mission fails, but Luis becomes the first of his bloodline to set foot in the New World. The book follows Luis’ descendants over the centuries as oppression propels them out of Spain, through Mexico and finally north to the remote town of Entrada de la Luna.

Five hundred years after Luis’ journey, the mostly Spanish-Catholic down-and-out town is unremarkable, yet it has its quirks. Why do the families light candles on Friday night? Why doesn’t anyone eat pork? Fifteen-year-old Miguel Torres, who shares a trailer with his mother, just knows that’s the way it’s always been. Miguel, a juvenile-detention alum, likes to spend his nights on a hill at the old cemetery, staring up at the sky through a homemade telescope. Miguel has little interest in the earthbound, and it’s no wonder. His mother is an exhausted woman, old before her time, and his father is an alcoholic who spray-paints pictures on cars for money. Miguel dreams of two things: discovering new moons and escaping his dying village. His hero is his Aunt Elena, a talented dancer who fled the desert for New York when she was 17.

But Aunt Elena harbors a dark, violent secret. And when tragic circumstances force her to return, both her past and that of the town’s is laid bare, and lives—especially Miguel’s—will never be the same.

Morris writes with a relaxed eloquence, shifting easily through characters. Gateway to the Moon is an entertaining, thoughtful read that raises a relevant question: Appearances aside, just how different are we?

Abel Campbell is the patriarch of a mightily dysfunctional yet close-knit Midwestern family, “the sun around which their lesser planets circled, the god they hoped to please.”

A retired attorney and judge, Abel presides over his mild and devout wife, Hattie, and their grown children: Doro (successful college dean who stoically wears the mantle of oldest living child with a whiff of martyrdom), Jesse (farmer and alcoholic in recovery), Gideon (wanderer not in recovery), ClairBell (divorced mom with a secret addiction to painkillers) and Billy (underemployed masseuse with a not-so-secret addiction to anything he can ingest).

Abel and Hattie’s eldest son, Nick, died 40 years before after a lifetime of health issues, and it’s clear their youngest, Billy, is next. Diagnosed with AIDS in his 20s, Billy “endured his fate with a shifting array of denial, humility, gallows humor, despair and hope, but from time to time things could get dicey, for in addition to his precarious health he was an addict. Painkillers, black tar, methadone, drink—any substance at hand. Cough syrup, cigarettes, codeine, cocaine. On a lean day even candy.”

The story begins with a family dinner, the most Norman Rockwellian of scenes: All except Gideon are gathered around the Campbell table in Amicus, Kansas, to celebrate Abel’s birthday. When Billy passes out face-first in his serving of cake, it sets in motion a series of clumsy interventions and accusations that threaten to fracture the family.

A National Book Award finalist for The River Beyond the World, Janet Peery is a masterful, poetic storyteller with a sharp eye for details that draw the reader into any scene. The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs is a heartbreakingly spot-on portrait of the ways families support and enable each other. It’s also a timely depiction of the ravages of opioid addiction on average American families, in a time when our nation faces a worsening crisis.