Book Review: The Dearly Beloved

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This is a book review of The Dearly Departed, a novel by author Cara Wall. In this review, I will explore the book’s themes, impact, and its effect on me.

The characters in the book are Charles, Lily, James, and Nan. They met in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James were hired to steward the Third Presbyterian Church. It was a turbulent time, and their personal differences threatened to tear them apart.

Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard. That is, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry.

How then, he asks himself, can he fall in love with Lily? She tells him that she will never believe in God, and that is troubling. And yet, how can he not love her?

James spent much of his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother. Nan grew up in Mississippi, the devout daughter of a minister.

Then James met Nan. Despite his skepticism toward hope, her constant faith changes the course of his life.

In The Dearly Beloved, we follow these two couples through decades of love and friendship. Against the backdrop of changes facing the city and the church’s congregation, these four forge improbable paths. And they struggle with uncertainty, heartbreak, joy, and their evolving relationships.

This book is a poignant meditation on faith and reason, marriage and children. It grapples with how we find meaning in our lives.

My Thoughts on This Book:

This is not a book I would typically have picked up and read. It had been on my Kindle for a long time when I clicked the title and began reading. And I was enchanted with this story.

It is the writing that moved me. The prose was spellbinding. I have never read so many beautiful and eloquent sentences in one book. And as a writer myself, I was humbled.

I have never been a religious person. I knew that was going to be a fact of life from the time I was very young. But I understand the need many have to have religion in their lives.

One of the two ministers explained that some people will believe no matter what. Others will not believe in God’s existence, and no one should try to sway them. Instead, he thought people should accept one another, regardless of their beliefs.

I’ve known people who are fiercely religious and could not exclude it from discussion. I have avoided that kind of individual in my life. Because, as the minister explained, no one will sway us from what we truly believe.

I raised my daughters to keep an open mind until adulthood. Then they could choose for themselves what to believe and what not to believe. My older daughter is not a churchgoer; my youngest one is.

As a first-time novelist, I’d say this author has a most auspicious beginning with this delightful and memorable book.

About The Author:

Cara Wall is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Stanford University. While in Iowa, Cara taught fiction writing in the undergraduate creative writing department. At the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, she served as the founder and inaugural director.

She went on to teach middle school English and history. Glamour, Salon, and the San Francisco Chronicle published an article about her. Cara lives in New York City with her family. The Dearly Beloved is her first novel.

Just like the people of James’s and Charles’s church, Wall said she wasn’t “interested in the trappings of religion”. What she really aimed at with this first novel was the “hard work that it takes to become truly empathetic.” 

“We talk a lot about empathy now in a way that we weren’t when I started the book,” Wall says. “Sometimes we talk about it as you have to have empathy for people, without really talking about how hard that is—and how worth it it is. You can accept someone else without diminishing yourself. It’s not a sacrifice to accept somebody else.”