The Wonder Worker
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Young, lonely, and insecure, Alice Fletcher is on the verge of emotional collapse when she stumbles into St. Benet's Church to dodge the London drizzle. There, she witnesses a group of gifted healers led by the charismatic Nicholas Darrow. Gaining refuge at last, Alice is drawn--inexorably, seductively--into the complex network of relationships at St. Benet's healing center--as she falls immediately, dangerously, in love with Darrow himself. Yet Darrow and his cutting-edge clergy are not all what they seem. And while Nicholas's dazzling powers now threaten to ruin all he attempts to save--including his own disturbed marriage--Alice's devotion to him deepens. Then a devastating tragedy transports her to the shocking center of truth. Yet fueled by her love for Nicholas and a boldly emerging intuition, she will hold together the lives spinning wildly out of control--as she herself is transformed forever.
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3 primary books#1 in St. Benet's
St. Benet's is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 1997 with contributions by Susan Howatch.
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I have been working through the Starbridge series for the second time and picked this up before re-reading Absolute Truths, the last of the original series. Wonder Worker is the first of an off shoot trilogy. This has Nicholas Darrow and Father Hall from the last two books of the Starbridge series, but it is 20 years later.
Nick is a pastor/healer in London. But as with the rest of the Starbridge series, the clergy also have their own spiritual lives and spiritual crises. This book alternates between three narrators, Hall, Darrow and Alice. Alice opens and closes the book, but all three are going through their own issues.
Howatch continues to amaze me for her spiritual depth. It may be that because I am friends or family with so many clergy and I have an Mdiv myself that I relate a lot more to these books than others can. But I think they are broadly applicable. One of the reoccurring themes of the books is that God uses broken people. God does not want us to be broken, but whole. However, wholeness is not required to be used. There are no perfect characters. And if you think there is a perfect character, it is just because they have not had their own spiritual crisis (or book) yet.
These books are not nice tidy Christian fiction. There is a lot of sex, drugs, language and real actual life presented. Howatch is not a ‘Christian fiction' author and these are not published by a Christian publisher. They would never be published by a Christian publisher, but this is what Christian fiction should be.