A Brooklyn native, Chris Bohjalian and his wife decided to move away from the city to Vermont after a harrowing experience inside a taxi cab driven by a terrorist permanently ended any plans for raising their two young children in New York City. Their subsequent years lived in peaceful suburban tranquility would ultimately enmesh itself into much of Bohjalian's later fiction. A novelist since the late nineties, he's been critcally acclaimed for his books Before You Know Kindness, Skeletons at the Feast and The Double Blind--all New York Times bestsellers--as well as Midwives, an Oprah Book Club selection. His most recent novel, Secrets of Eden, examines mental and emotional dissolusionment of a small town pastor, Rev. Stephen Drew, after one of his parishioners is murdered.
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"Believe no one. Trust no one. Believe all of our stories are suspect." p. 16
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Rev. Stephen Drew thought it a bit odd the way Alice Hayward, a 35-year-old married mother of one, had behaved at her baptism--a little too morbid. A few hours later, after the bodies of both Alice and her husband George had been found dead of an apparent murder-suicide, Stephen knew he wasn't mistaken. Shock and dismay inevitably follow in the immediate wake of the tragedy and, as well might be expected, Stephen himself is confronted with a severe crisis of faith as the theological doctrines and long-attenuated personal convictions of divine sovereignty are replaced by doubts, fears and perpetuating uncertainty. His angst and tormented soul are only somewhat quieted after meeting Heather Laurent, the author of several humongously popular books on alternative spirituality. Heather, coincidentally, witnessed the murder-suicide of her own parents and is fittingly in a position to relate to Katie, Alice's now orphaned adolescent daughter who may seem to know more than she's telling. Heather is also able to proffer some encouraging words and comforting inspiration to Stephen, and with time the pair develop an unlikely bond.
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But just as Stephen and Heather's relationship begins to blossom into something more and Stephen (a bachelor) begins to see the world and his life with a different outlook, new questions arise in the case, particularly about whether Alice's husband George actually killed himself after all? Was George murdered as well? Were both Alice and George killed together with the act only arranged to look like a murder-suicide? When the state's attorney uncovers new evidence, strange illegible passages in Alice's diary, which link Stephen himself to the crime, it seems the true nature of things may run a bit deeper than originally thought and more than one person may share responsibility for this horrible tragedy.
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Bohjalian hasn't turned out a bad book yet and this effort keeps the streak alive. The storyline more than the characters, who at times can come off a bit flaky, gives the book its appeal, employing the similar but no-less-likable tactic used in Before You Know Kindness and Skeletons at the Feast of an initial traumatic event highlighting the beginning pages and allowing the multi-perspective narrative to work in the context. Readers unfamiliar with Bohjalian will find his themes and featured topics fit the same mold as Jodi Picoult and Anita Shreve, who share an affinity for New England serenity and domestic disquietude. The mood reflects a more removed setting, and conversely, a more personalized atmosphere. Despite the grisly nature of the proceedings and accompanying investigation, the novel's neither mystery nor hard-boiled crime fiction and could barely be categorized as a thriller with the action focusing more intensely on intuitive reflections, character observations and relationships.
Millions of people the world over know that the calendar date of October 31 is a chance to dress up, eat candy and throw parties. Halloween, derived from the former term 'All Hallows Eve' meant to imply the night before All Saints' Day, is actually one of those holidays loosely based on both pagan and Christian traditions but which has come to betoken a more secularized mode of celebration. Yet the date is significant for another reason, an event in history every bit as laudable and largely more important altogether than anything its more popular festival has to offer. Reformation Day commemorates the day in history, October 31, 1517, when a young German monk, Order of St. Augustine, named Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses On the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of the Church in Wittenberg in the region then known as the Holy Roman Empire (modern day Germany). Though officially intended as a scholarly dissertation on the Papacy's policy on indulgences (essentially the theory of buying your way out of purgatory and into heaven), the 95 points of disputation clearly held an undercurrent of challenge to the Roman church whose abuse of power and uncensored distortion of ecclesiastical principles had long preyed upon its subjects.
The date of the posting actually coincided with the Pope's "fundraiser", a sale of indulgences intended to raise money for a new Basilica in Rome and a scheme to which Luther effectively replied "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest of the rich, build the basilica of Saint Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?" (Thes. 86). Luther would further denounce John Tietzel, one of the leading peddlers of such indulgences and other trinkets, by mocking his trade--"As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs"(Thes. 76). The 95 Theses posted to the church door were actually a copy of the same document Luther had disseminated among several of the more prominent princes in the Northern Germanic kingdoms, namely Frederik III of Saxony, an important political figure who would later play an implemental role in protecting Luther himself from angry papal legates. It was a day and an event which put in motion not merely another schism within the Roman church, but an entire breaking from papal authority and its precepts altogether. It was the Protestant Reformation, a movement which re-established salvation along Biblical lines and abolished the Pope's power in much of Europe, spreading first in Germany, then portions of the continental North, Scandinavia and finally Great Britain (It should be noted that King Henry VIII of England allied himself with Luther and his growing contemporaries (Calvin, Zwingli, Melancthon, etc.) out of mostly selfish ambition, his reasons for turning Protestant more out of a want to annul his marriage than break with the Pope. Though to be fair, Henry was at least marginally keen on the nature of religious dogma and had for some time been contemplating the reformers' theology.) Today Reformation Day is still celebrated on October 31st in the Lutheran Church as well as in other protestant circles. Further Reading on the Protestant Reformation and on Martin Luther can be found in the Dewey number 270.1 or in biographies under B LUTHER. 
