SOURCE: "Gumption and Grace in the Novels of Kaye Gibbons," in The Christian Century, Vol. 109, No. 27, September 23-30, 1992, pp. 842-46.

In the following essay, Wood examines Gibbons's first three novels, contending that her writings are "spiritually bracing" because her "characters tell and listen to stories … to discern their tragic situation, [and to adjust their dreams to their disappointments."]

Devotional reading can be injurious to the devotional life, C. S. Lewis once observed. He confessed that he was more deeply moved to prayer and piety by Athanasius's treatise on the incarnation than by books designed to inspire and uplift. Few things tempt me more to doubt than sentimental assurances of faith. God is never so unreal as when people speak complacently about his reality. To invigorate my own spiritual life, I turn not to books of contemporary spirituality but to works of contemporary fiction, like those of a young...