When Forgiveness is Not enough: Anne Tyler's Saint Maybe

I love the work of Anne Tyler.  Her prose is open, direct, kind and she writes about the people I know.   Her characters are the Americans I grew up around, people from the working and upper-middle class who lives are usually defined by geographical boundaries and aspirations.  These are not the folks who dream of learning a second language, becoming famous or climbing Everest.  These are the middle-class, middle-income, middle everything Americans.  (God love us, we can be so boring at times.)  Anne sees our faults and our fears and still loves us (especially those from her native Baltimore) but her novels tend to disarrange our neat little worlds.  Underneath her open sentences are some serious ideas and I like the way she displays them.  Most readers know her more famous books, Breathing Lessons and The Accidental Tourist but my favorite has, I think, the quintessential Anne Tyler title: Saint Maybe.

Set in the early 1960's, the Bedloes are convinced they are the prototype of a American family.   They are an established family in a well-settled neighborhood and their youngest son, Ian,  seems the most well-sorted of all.  His looks, brains and sports ability are all better than average, though not extraordinary.  His girlfriend and his college match as well.  Nothing about Ian or life should change.   Except they both do.

Death comes to the Bedloe family and Ian is sure he's the cause.  Despairing from the guilt he carries, Ian finds The Church of the Second Chance and discovers the idea that forgiveness is possible only with atonement and an effort to repair the damage.  Ian's choices and what happens after that rewrites this family's story  more than the losses they sustain.

The novel's twin themes are choices and grace and how we deal with unexpected results.  In the end, we make choices that alter our futures and how we deal with the results gauges the joy in our lives.  Do we sigh or regret?  Do we run?  Do we make lemonade?  Or, like Miniver Cheevy, do we pretend and keep on drinking?    Most of us, I think, accept our outcomes  and eventually see the burdens we resented become the structure in our lives.   And so we live, we ordinary people, graced with choices, results and cares.  Do those cares make us saints once we carry them well?  Perhaps in the world of Saint Maybe.