From a Publisher’s Weekly report on Book Expo:<\/p>\n
For those who track religion, one of the most intriguing developments
\nat BEA this year was the quiet proliferation of novels from “secular”
\ntrade houses that deal with religious or spiritual themes. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
Clearly,
\nthe popularity of books like the Left Behind series and “The Da Vinci
\nCode,” as well as films like Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,”
\nseems to be paving the way for a new openness to exploring religion in
\nsome way. In many cases, the presence of religion is a carefully
\nconsidered backdrop, as in Adam Langer’s much-touted coming-of-age
\nnovel “Crossing California” (Riverhead, June), which traces several
\nyoung Jewish residents of the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park.
\nAnother much discussed new novel, Nina Marie Martinez’s zesty
\n“Caramba! A Tale Told in Turns of the Card” (Knopf, April), features a
\nborn-again Christian mariachi character and a host of ruminations on
\nfolk Catholicism and religious syncretism.<\/p>\nOther new fiction offerings are more explicitly spiritual, tracing
\nindividuals’ faith journeys and struggles. At the Milkweed Press
\nbooth, galleys were available for “Katya: A Novel of the Russian
\nRevolution” (Sept.) by the Canadian author Sandra Birdsell, who is
\nherself the daughter of a Russian-born Mennonite. Called “Willa
\nCather-like” by its publisher, the novel traces the viability of
\nMennonite pacifism during the tumultuous times of early 20th-century
\nRussia. At Algonquin, long a pacesetter in literary and Southern
\nfiction, three fall novels will explore spiritual questions. Kentucky
\nnovelist Silas House offers “The Coal Tattoo” (Sept.), in which one of
\nthe main characters is a young Pentecostal woman who endures a crisis
\nof faith. In George Shaffner’s “In the Land of Second Chances” (Oct.),
\na traveling salesman with seemingly supernatural abilities may be an
\nanswer to prayer for the folks of a small Nebraska town, who discover
\nhope in hard times. And in Joshua Braff’s comic novel “The Unthinkable
\nThoughts of Jacob Green” (Sept.), a Jewish kid from New Jersey
\nstruggles to please his impossible father.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
Religious Fiction - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religious Fiction - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-06-23T08:18:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Religious Fiction - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Religious Fiction - Via Media","og_description":"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.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-06-23T08:18:07+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html","name":"Religious Fiction - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-06-23T08:18:07+00:00","dateModified":"2004-06-23T08:18:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/religious_fiction.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Religious Fiction"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}