The Dearly Beloved A Novel
The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall is a novel published by Simon and Schuster on July 7, 2020, featuring 384 pages in English. This edition presents a narrative that explores the intertwined lives of two married couples, Charles and Lily, and James and Nan, as they navigate their relationships against the backdrop of social change in 1960s New York City. The story begins when Charles and James are appointed as copastors at the historic Third Presbyterian Church, where their differing personal beliefs and backgrounds create tension and complexity in their friendships and marriages.
Readers will find a moving portrayal of love, faith, and friendship as the characters grapple with their convictions and the challenges of their lives. The narrative delves into themes of marriage, personal growth, and the search for meaning, highlighting the characters’ struggles and triumphs over decades. Cara Wall’s writing invites reflection on the nature of belief and the bonds that connect us, making The Dearly Beloved a thoughtful exploration of human relationships amidst the evolving landscape of a changing society.
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“This gentle, gorgeously written book may be one of my favorites ever.” —Jenna Bush Hager (A Today show “Read with Jenna” Book Club Selection!)
This “moving portrait of love and friendship set against a backdrop of social change” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice) traces two married couples whose lives become entangled when the husbands become copastors at a famed New York city congregation in the 1960s.
Charles and Lily, James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences however, threaten to tear them apart.
Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry. How then, can he fall in love with Lily—fiercely intellectual, elegantly stern—after she tells him with certainty that she will never believe in God? And yet, how can he not?
James, the youngest son in a hardscrabble Chicago family, spent much of his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother. Nan grew up in Mississippi, the devout and beloved daughter of a minister and a debutante. James’s escape from his desperate circumstances leads him to Nan and, despite his skepticism of hope in all its forms, her gentle, constant faith changes the course of his life.
In The Dearly Beloved, Cara wall reminds us of “the power of the novel in its simplest, richest form: bearing intimate witness to human beings grappling with their faith and falling in love,” (Entertainment Weekly, A-) as we follow these two couples through decades of love and friendship, jealousy and understanding, forgiveness and commitment. Against the backdrop of turbulent changes facing the city and the church’s congregation, Wall offers a poignant meditation on faith and reason, marriage and children, and the ways we find meaning in our lives. The Dearly Beloved is a gorgeous, wise, and provocative novel that is destined to become a classic.
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