Flights in the heavenlies

The setting is clearly California: San Francisco, the San Joaquin Valley, the Sierras. The characters are varied: a middle-aged clairvoyant, a fifteen-year-old who finds three million dollars, an ex-priest, a sheep rancher, a cook, a nun. The problem, often, is love.

Ernest Finney plunges us into the lives of his characters at moments of vulnerability, when they face astonishing choices that are sometimes comic, sometimes poignant, sometimes deadly. In lean, direct writing that expertly conveys each voice, he gives us flesh-and-blood people who continue to surprise us, right up to the end.