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Overview
One of the brightest lights in late-twentieth-century literature, Frederick Buechner has published more than twenty-five works of fiction and nonfiction that continue to dazzle critics and readers alike, adding continuously to the ranks of his fiercely loyal following. On the Road with the Archangel is sure to continue this tradition with its powerful blend of humor, artistry, and insight into the nature of the human and the divine.
Inspired by events in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, from the second century B.C., this is the magical tale of two families brought together, as no mere coincidence, by the devilishly clever archangel Raphael. One is the family of Tobit, a virtuous man who can no longer support his wife and son because of Raguel, the quiet, devoted father of Sarah whose pact with the demon Asmodeus has left her life in tragic shambles.
Assuming human form, Raphael appears before Tabias, Tobit's devoted son, to help him retrieve his father's fortune hidden in a faraway city. Together, they embark on a miraculous journey in search of the answers to both families' prayers--a journey that is made challenging and delightful by Rapheal's artful efficiency.
On the Road with the Archangel is a masterful combination of fluid writing, lyrical storytelling, and ancient truth blended with modern wisdom. And beneath it all lies a subtle, glowing meditation on the nature of the Holy.
Hailed as "one of our most original storytellers" (USA Today), Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Frederick Buechner has written an extraordinary new novel that shines with the mystery and wonder of the divine.Drawn from the ancient apocryphal Book of Tobit, On the Road with the Archangel unravels the tale of a eccentric blind father and his somewhat bumbling song who journeys to seek his family's lost treasure. Narrated by the wry and resourceful archangel Raphael, Buencher's tale is a pure delight, alive with vivid characters, delightful adventures and wondrous revelations.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062005434 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 03/09/2010 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 223 KB |
About the Author
Frederick Buechner, author of more than thirty works of fiction and nonfiction, is an ordained Presbyterian minister. He has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent work is Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Tobit Insulted
I am Raphael, one of the seven Archangels who pass in and out of the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he. I bring him the prayers of all who pray and of those who don't even know that they're praying.
Some prayers I hold out as far from me as my arm will reach, the way a woman holds a dead mouse by the tail when she removes it from the kitchen. Some, like flowers, are almost too beautiful to touch, and others so aflame that I'd be afraid of their setting me on fire if I weren't already more like fire than I am like anything else. There are prayers of such power that you might almost say they carry me rather than the other way round -the way a bird with outstretched wings is carried higher and higher on the back of the wind. There are prayers so apologetic and shamefaced and halfhearted that they all but melt away in my grasp like sad little flakes of snow. Some prayers are very boring.
Would it surprise you to know that when I'm not carrying prayers, I often shake with laughter? It is the world that I laugh at and never more heartily than when I bring to mind the story that in good time I will tell you.
It is the story of a journey and a fish and a boy. It is the story of a demon with hair like a' woman's and a lion's teeth, and of a chatterbox of a wife and a slender, dark-haired girl who loved her father. It is the story of a twitter of sparrows who never for a moment doubted that their chalky droppings were a gift for the world to treasure, and of a dog with the eyes of a saint and a lavender tongue, and of two bags of silver with their seals unbroken. And it is the story of how I gotmyself up as a young globe-trotter with a stout pair of boots and a sack full of road maps. You will say that they didn't have such things as stout boots and road maps in ancient Assyria, and the chances are you are right, but when you have seen as many Assyrias come and go as I have, you tend to lose track of details.
I say I will tell the story "in good time," by which I mean two things. First, I mean that eventually I will tell it. I mean that through all its twists and turns I will bring it to an end at last. Second, I mean that time itself is good, even the times when the dung heaps of Nineveh were littered with the variously strangled, eviscerated, dismembered cadavers of those imprudent enough to catch the bloodshot eye of Shalmaneser, or Sennacherib, or Esarhaddon, or whatever sociopath happened to be sitting on the throne at the moment with his face all but lost in the oily black ringlets of a lamb's-wool beard and on either hand a winged bull higher than a house who looked just like him.
The things that the world fills time with are enough to turn the heart to stone, but the goodness of time itself is as untouched by them as the freshness of a spring morning is untouched by the yelps from the scaffold. Time is good because the Holy One made it that way and then set the heavenly bodies wheeling through the sky so there would always be a way of marking its passage. Unfortunately, not even the most devout understand this for more than possibly a day or two out of the entire year when everything seems to be going their way. The rest of the year they go around like everybody else rolling their eyes and expecting terrible things to happen. When terrible things do happen, they fail to understand that for the most part they have brought them down on their own heads. They prefer to think that it is time itself that is terrible and that the terrible things are only another method by which the Holy One afflicts them for their sins.
Take Tobit for instance. He was blind as a bat when Anna, his wife, insulted him, but he rolled his eyes anyway because she had told him he was a fool, and he suspected that she might be right and that the Holy One agreed with her. She stood in the kitchen with her lower lip thrust forward in the way that she had and dressed him down so thoroughly that you would never have guessed that in her heart she was quite fond of him. She herself did not guess it, so carried away she was by the force of her own eloquence. Every month or so she was in the habit of doing something new and implausible with her hair because it was a way of using up some of her unspent energy. On this occasion she had dyed it as black as the king's beard and, except for a few corkscrew curls around her ears, had piled it high on her head with the use of some bone pins and a pair of ivory combs that one of the rich women she worked for had given her in a moment of uncharacteristic generosity. Not noticing the dog as she stormed out of the kitchen, she tripped over him. He was a large, mild-mannered dog with a coat as shaggy and gray as smoke who belonged to her son, Tobias. When he leapt to his feet to get out of her way, he knocked over a table piled with dirty dishes, and Tobit, who of course could see nothing of what had happened, concluded not unreasonably that she was in the process of adding to her insult by pulling the house down about their ears. It was the last straw, and once she had left, he groped his way through the wreckage to the outhouse behind the vine-covered wall in the courtyard, which a few years earlier had been the scene of his blinding. It was there that he uttered a prayer....
On the Road with the Archangel. Copyright © by Frederick Buechner. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.