Latest from Pulitzer Prize finalist a winner

  If you like a novel with great characters and wonderful writing, don’t miss “River of Heaven” by Lee Martin, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006 for his book “The Bright Forever.”
  Sam Brady is 65 and has lived a lonely life, kept company primarily by his basset hound, Stump.
  “I’m a man who chooses to be alone, a man who has a secret. I’m a closet auntie, a fag, a queer — you know all the words. Here in Mt. Gilead, even in this day and age when the world is supposed to be more tolerant, more accepting, it’s clear that many folks think this is a wrong thing to be. ... The truth is I don’t much know how to be around people. I’ve spent so many years avoiding them for fear that they’d find out the truth. ... It’s easier — at least it has been for me — to lock the truth away and live quietly with my dogs. ... I’ve given up companionship for fear of losing it. Better to never have it than to watch it disappear.”
  Being gay isn’t Sam’s only secret, and his isolation comes to an abrupt end when his brother, Cal, returns to town and a shared tragedy in their past causes regrets to resurface.
  Sam is not the only lonely one in these pages.
  Arthur is Sam’s neighbor and a widower. They’ve known each other since they were boys. As Arthur adjusts to life without his wife, he latches on to Sam, dragging him to the Seasoned Chefs, a cooking class for suddenly single men. Arthur’s granddaughter, Maddie, who is filled with her own sadness, eventually comes to stay with her grandfather, and brings a joy to Sam he didn’t know he was missing. Vera, who teaches the Seasoned Chefs class, has her own isolation to bear. The loneliness is a bond she and Sam share.
  “ ‘My husband died a long time ago.’ She traces a finger over the stone in the wedding ring. ‘So long ago, you’d think it would start to feel like it wasn’t anything that ever happened in my life. But that’s not the truth of it, is it, Sam? The real things — the ones that matter — they stick with you.’ ’’
  Martin perfectly weaves together all the characters’ stories, blending in dramatic plot twists along the way. The story is about loneliness, yes, how all of us are lonely at some time. But it is also about regret, love, family, self-acceptance, endurance and redemption.
  “A new day comes, and no matter what your life has brought, you try to keep up with the hours unfolding before you. If you can manage to keep your spirit away from the inclination to give up, you eventually lift a foot, you take a step, you go on.”
 “River of Heaven” is a powerfully moving tale, one that conveys the difficulty of truly coming to accept ourselves and the healing power of finding joy through each other.
  “Times like these, I try harder than ever to believe there’s a kinder world going on somewhere else beyond this one, and, if there really is, we’ll all find it one day. We’ll cross over. ... Maybe that’s what the dead would tell us if they could: from time to time we touch that other world, their world, where no one betrays friends or brothers, and there’s no one to hate, not even yourself, and nothing to regret, and no reason to live in shame. We touch it, this paradise.”