Chris Fabry's "Almost Heaven"

If I had known that I was about to read a book about a mandolin, an angel, a radio station and a lovelorn mail man, I don’t know if I would opened the cover (an angel?). But then, Almost Heaven is a novel by Chris Fabry, who is such a good storyteller (Dogwood, June Bug) that I would have read it even if there had been a picture of Barney the dinosaur on the cover.

And I wasn’t disappointed. Not one bit.

Almost Heaven is the third of Fabry’s “Dogwood” novels. The basic story lines are unrelated; what they have in common is the setting – a small town in the author’s home state of West Virginia. Dogwood is a love story about a young man who goes to prison for an automobile accident that killed three children and then tries to rekindle a romance with his girlfriend, who is now married (yes, this is Christian fiction; trust me). June Bug is a retelling of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, but it is also a story that stands on its own.

Almost Heaven is about a man whose life seems broken in so many ways but who still manages to do what he knows he’s been called to do, even if he doesn’t understand why. His name is Billy Allman. His life seems like a steady stream of tragedies and disappointments – the deaths of his father and then his mother; rejection by the girl he loves; his innocence taken from him; and living from hand to mouth while he tries to keep his dream – a small radio station – alive. What he doesn’t know is that he’s being watched over by a guardian angel named Malachi, even if the angel isn’t quite sure what the point of Billy’s life is supposed to be.

It would have been easy for this story to slip into melancholy or sentimentalism, but Fabry blends it with a strong undercurrent of optimism and faith. What results is a story of how God uses “the least of these” – people who are broken, often in multiple ways – to accomplish remarkable things.

Fabry, the author of children’s books with Jerry Jenkins (he of the "Left Behind" series fame) and co-author of Coming Back Stronger with New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, has written a remarkable series with these three “Dogwood” novels. They each contain enough interesting twists and turns to keep the reader fully engaged (and sometimes tense).

But most of all there is a tenderness that suffuses these stories, a tenderness for family, people and place.

Chris Fabry's "Dogwood"

In October 2007, my wife and I drove to Williamsburg for vacation. We spent almost exactly one week (had a great time), and then drove back to St. Louis. Crossing over the mountains of Virginia (and discovering what it’s like to drive in mountain fog), we arrived in West Virginia at the absolute peak of the fall colors. And it was spectacular. We’d never seen fall colors like those in West Virginia – and the colors went on for scores of miles. The state is an incredibly beautiful place.

It is that sense of place that permeates Chris Fabry’s Dogwood – the hills and valleys, the vistas, the back roads, and even the colors infuse the novel. And – no surprise – West Virginia is the author's native state.

Fabry is best known for writing novels for children and young adults. Last year, he shifted gears, and published Dogwood, aimed squarely at adult readers. And glad I am that he did.

It's a great story. Or more correctly, Dogwood is a carefully constructed layering of stories. It is the story of Will Hatfield, who’s gone to prison for manslaughter – killing two little girls in what was almost a hit-and-run. It’s the story of Karin, Will’s great love, who has created a new life for herself, with a husband who’s a pastor and three children. It’s the story of Danny Boyd, whose two sisters died when Will’s car struck them, and Ruthie, their grandmother who befriends Karin. Then there’s the town of Dogwood, which will not forgive Will when he’s released from prison and returns for one reason alone – because he still loves Karin. There’s the undercurrent of lawlessness and viciousness. And then there’s place and memory, which are characters in their own right.

The story of what happened when the little girls died is the heart of the novel, and Fabry uses it to structure the plot, gradually unfolding the individual but intertwined stories of the characters. As memories melt away the intervening years and the characters tell and live their stories, facts become less certain, nothing is what it appears to be, and something new is born.

I started reading Dogwood on Good Friday and finished it Easter Sunday. Like this time of the year we celebrate, Fabry’s novel is one of sacrifice, death and resurrection.