Fictional communities

Books: From Mitford to Port William, two elegant writers show different sides of Scripture—grace and the valley of the shadow of death | Nancy M. Tischler

Inspirational Fiction"—shelves at Barnes & Noble or Borders are full of Christian serial romances. In novels by Janette Oke, Tracie Peterson, Judith Pella, Michael Phillips, Brock and Bodie Thoene, Lori Wick, and dozens of others, the heroes are usually handsome, the heroines beautiful and religious, and the outcome foreordained. Many of these books use historical settings and rely on tragic times, exotic places, or wild adventure.

Scattered among the general fiction shelves are less predictable Christian novels by Marilynne Robinson, Athol Dickson, David James Duncan, Walker Percy, Leif Enger, and Anne Tyler. And at least two moderns who take their religion seriously, Jan Karon and Wendell Berry, have created richly imagined settings for their linked novels, including—like William Faulkner, with his famous Yoknapatawpha novels—maps of their terrain.