Jabbok: Every time I learn this, the truer it gets: We can only live our lives looking ahead, and we can only understand them looking back. So says Buddy Hinton, the protagonist of Kee Sloan’s mesmerizing debut novel. Growing up in rural Mississippi just a couple of miles from the Mississippi River, eight-year-old Buddy spends his summers playing in the woods behind his neighborhood. The day Buddy spots a wounded deer in those woods, he is wholly unprepared for a chance meeting with a stranger who will shape the course of his life. Jake—fisherman, ex-convict, former tent preacher—and Buddy form an unlikely bond that transcends age and race. Forged by their many conversations about life and faith, their friendship endures sorrows, celebrations, and transitions, ultimately revealing the power to heal them both.
Beulah: Now twenty-five years old, Buddy Hinton is a newly ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. While seminary prepared him for ministry in small congregations in Mississippi, it is his experiences with the people he encounters along his journey, in a little village in the mountains of Honduras, at a summer camp for people with disabilities, and on the steps of his own church, that open his eyes to the mysteries and realities of life, love, ministry, and God.
Prodigal: I think my friend Jake was probably right: “In the end, our stories is all we is.” This is Buddy's story continuing, filled with lessons he's learned, truthes he holds as precious, and the faith he has sometimes struggled to keep.
The Rt. Rev. John McKee Sloan served as the 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, and is now retired. He was ordained a priest in 1982 and a bishop in 2008. Kee grew up in Vicksburg, Mississippi; his wife, Tina, grew up in Leland in the Mississippi Delta. They now live in Birmingham, Alabama, and have two adult children, McKee and Mary Nell.
Jabbok: Every time I learn this, the truer it gets: We can only live our lives looking ahead, and we can only understand them looking back. So says Buddy Hinton, the protagonist of Kee Sloan’s mesmerizing debut novel. Growing up in rural Mississippi just a couple of miles from the Mississippi River, eight-year-old Buddy spends his summers playing in the woods behind his neighborhood. The day Buddy spots a wounded deer in those woods, he is wholly unprepared for a chance meeting with a stranger who will shape the course of his life. Jake—fisherman, ex-convict, former tent preacher—and Buddy form an unlikely bond that transcends age and race. Forged by their many conversations about life and faith, their friendship endures sorrows, celebrations, and transitions, ultimately revealing the power to heal them both.
Beulah: Now twenty-five years old, Buddy Hinton is a newly ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. While seminary prepared him for ministry in small congregations in Mississippi, it is his experiences with the people he encounters along his journey, in a little village in the mountains of Honduras, at a summer camp for people with disabilities, and on the steps of his own church, that open his eyes to the mysteries and realities of life, love, ministry, and God.
Prodigal: I think my friend Jake was probably right: “In the end, our stories is all we is.” This is Buddy's story continuing, filled with lessons he's learned, truthes he holds as precious, and the faith he has sometimes struggled to keep.
The Rt. Rev. John McKee Sloan served as the 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, and is now retired. He was ordained a priest in 1982 and a bishop in 2008. Kee grew up in Vicksburg, Mississippi; his wife, Tina, grew up in Leland in the Mississippi Delta. They now live in Birmingham, Alabama, and have two adult children, McKee and Mary Nell.
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