Here’s a review, in Commonweal, of Jon Hassler’s most recent novel.

Religion has become more a background than foreground element in his fiction since North of Hope (1990), in some ways his best and most Catholic novel. Yet Hassler has asserted that Catholicism gives a sense of order and perspective to the world; and without that sense of order, even The New Woman might seem on the verge of spinning off into a vertiginous satire of despair.

In the end, The New Woman does not prove its author unfaithful to his readers after all. As usual, Hassler’s plot flows as inconspicuously as the Badbattle River through Staggerford. The author continues to manipulate time sequence expressively, and point of view in his hands remains as fluid and opportunistic as ever-now in one character, now in another, flowing to wherever the most humor or the most unusual insight may be found. And the problems of the Sunset residents turn out to be the perennial themes of a Hassler novel-muted, perhaps, into a minor key by the age of his dramatis personae.

As it happens, North of Hope is a part of the Loyola Classics series, released last spring, intro by yours truly.

The writing of that intro was, per usual, traumatic with a dash of fangirl shivers. Plans A,B, and C for authors to write an intro fell through, and then I got the bright idea to ask Richard Russo, who had penned the NYTimes of the novel when it originally came out. I worte to him via his agency, not even expecting an answer. About a week after I sent the letter, I dropped the children off at school and dawdled for some reason. Grocery store, probably. When I got home, I checked messages. There was one.

"Hi, Amy, this is Richard Russo…"

Did I drop to the floor in near-tears? Yes. Because he’d said, with great regret because Hassler was one of his favorites, that he didn’t have time to do the intro? Partly. Because I’d missed by about three minutes a chance to actually converse with one of my living literary heros? Mostly.

Ah, well. My one-minute personal conversation with Richard Russo was not to be.

So, Plans D and E also came to naught, which left me, publication date looming, to just go ahead and do it. Which was not quite Plan 9, but close. Actually, I love North of Hope, so it wasn’t hard to do on short notice – Here it is.