What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
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Peace Like a River
SOLVED: Adult Fiction
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SOLVED. Fiction or Magical Realism story: Devout father of two like a modern-day Jesus - flees danger, visits heaven. [s]
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What's the location (country/region)? Where are they travelling to, going east/west/etc.?
Hi Kris, the mother seems to have died and the father is raising the children alone. Not sure where in the US they live but my memory is that it was in the Midwest, and they seem to be traveling west.
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Lobstergirl wrote: "Please create a new comment when you solve your query - otherwise no one knows. No one gets a notification and your thread doesn't get bumped if you merely edit your post."Hello, I edited it to say "SOLVED" - I need to add a comment as well?
Michelle wrote: "SOLVED: "Peace Like A River" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_L...This is "SOLVED" - the book is "Peace Like a River". I also posted to another site and someone there was able to identify it within 24 hours.
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Yes. Otherwise the thread doesn't get bumped/change place in the queue. We always need the OP to say "this has been found."
Around 2003/2004 my book club read a fiction/magical realism book about a widowed father with two tween/teenage children. The father is either a pastor or very devout believer of God. They are poor. For some reason they are compelled to flee cross country by car. At some point the family of three is about to eat soup - all the food they have - when guests come to the door. The father, the essence of goodness, instructs the kids to set out more place settings, which they do not want to do as there is barely enough soup for them. But they do as he instructs, serve the guests first, and magically find that each time they return to the kitchen the pot has the same amount of soup. My impression is that the guests may have been angels. The endless pot of soup, of course, an allusion to Jesus and the multiplying loaves of bread and fish.
While on the run the family meets a woman, maybe a waitress, who seems she will be a romantic interest for the father and future mother for the children. At some point the father is given the opportunity to visit heaven, because he is so loved by God. Heaven is vividly described as a land of bright colors, and rainbow waterfalls, and the father delights in it and begins to cavort in the water.