From a Publisher’s Weekly report on Book Expo:

For those who track religion, one of the most intriguing developments
at BEA this year was the quiet proliferation of novels from “secular”
trade houses that deal with religious or spiritual themes.

Clearly,
the popularity of books like the Left Behind series and “The Da Vinci
Code,” as well as films like Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,”
seems to be paving the way for a new openness to exploring religion in
some way. In many cases, the presence of religion is a carefully
considered backdrop, as in Adam Langer’s much-touted coming-of-age
novel “Crossing California” (Riverhead, June), which traces several
young Jewish residents of the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park.
Another much discussed new novel, Nina Marie Martinez’s zesty
“Caramba! A Tale Told in Turns of the Card” (Knopf, April), features a
born-again Christian mariachi character and a host of ruminations on
folk Catholicism and religious syncretism.

Other new fiction offerings are more explicitly spiritual, tracing
individuals’ faith journeys and struggles. At the Milkweed Press
booth, galleys were available for “Katya: A Novel of the Russian
Revolution” (Sept.) by the Canadian author Sandra Birdsell, who is
herself the daughter of a Russian-born Mennonite. Called “Willa
Cather-like” by its publisher, the novel traces the viability of
Mennonite pacifism during the tumultuous times of early 20th-century
Russia. At Algonquin, long a pacesetter in literary and Southern
fiction, three fall novels will explore spiritual questions. Kentucky
novelist Silas House offers “The Coal Tattoo” (Sept.), in which one of
the main characters is a young Pentecostal woman who endures a crisis
of faith. In George Shaffner’s “In the Land of Second Chances” (Oct.),
a traveling salesman with seemingly supernatural abilities may be an
answer to prayer for the folks of a small Nebraska town, who discover
hope in hard times. And in Joshua Braff’s comic novel “The Unthinkable
Thoughts of Jacob Green” (Sept.), a Jewish kid from New Jersey
struggles to please his impossible father.