In April 1997, novelist Price (Roxanna Slade) received a letter from a young medical student, Jim Fox, stricken with cancer, whose comments implied two simple but powerful questions: "Does God exist?" "If God exists, does God care?" Price responded to the letter immediately with a phone call, and he followed this call with a long, thoughtful letter on the nature of suffering and the justice and righteousness of God. Price admits that he is no theologian or regular churchgoer. He tells Fox that he is compelled to answer the letter because of being a "watchful human in his seventh decade who harbored a similar killing invader deep in his body a few years ago and who thinks he was saved by a caring, though enigmatic, God." Price's eloquent letter to Fox courses through the Bible, Buddhist and Hindu scriptures, Dante, T.S. Eliot and Milton as it attempts to offer solace to a suffering fellow soul. Through his reading, Price concludes, "I have no sense whatever that God chooses to notice individuals who look especially `noticeable'... the stinking wretch on the frozen pavement, the abandoned orphan... may be of no more concern to God than I and all my social peers." The "steady notice of God" is likely to cause suffering, he says, and points to the lives of Joan of Arc and St. Francis as examples. Price also explores briefly some of the classic explanations of God's part in allowing suffering and finds inadequacies in every one. In the end, Price can simply say to Fox, "I know I believe that God loves his creation, whatever his kind of love [Price's italics] means for you and me." In an afterword for "further reading, looking, and listening," Price provides a nicely annotated list of classic works, from Dante and Milton to Bach, Mahler and Mark RothkoÄpoetry, music and art that raise the questions of God's justice and evil. Price's letter offers more wisdom and eloquence on this topic than many of the traditional theological writings on the subject. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Well known as a novelist and poet, Price has had a lover's quarrel with Christianity for many years. This letter, a kind of open response to the travails of an acquaintance facing probable death from cancer, represents his struggle with the questions of Job. Price's ever-engaging prose does not offer new solutions to the problem of evil, but many readers will gain comfort and insight from his depiction of a noninterfering but deeply loving God. Recommended for most collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/98.] (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Esteemed novelist Price received a letter from a young man who had read Price's 1994 book A Whole New Life, about his suffering and recovery from spinal cancer, and was himself now a victim of cancer. The young man was essentially asking Price two of the most profound questions imaginable: does God exist, and is God a loving, caring force? Price decided to turn a lecture he was scheduled to deliver into a response to the young man; and what the reader has in hand is an extended version of the lecture he delivered. As evidence of his belief in a caring God, Price offers a series of "demonstrators," patterns he has witnessed in his own life. Not calling himself a theologian, Price claims only "to be a watchful human in his seventh decade who harbored a . . . killing invader deep in his body a few years ago and who thinks he was saved by a caring, though enigmatic, God." For readers who appreciate fine reasoning and greatly eloquent prose. --Brad Hooper