Author: Berry, Wendell

Category: Fiction

Jayber Crow, born in Goforth, Kentucky, orphaned at age ten, began his search as a "pre-ministerial student" at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with "Old Grit," his profound professor of New Testament Greek. "You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out -- perhaps a little at a time." "And how long is that going to take?" "I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps." That could be a long time." "I will tell you a further mystery," he said. "It may take longer." Eventually, after the flood of 1937, Jayber becomes the barber of the small community of Port William, Kentucky. From behind that barber chair he lives out the questions that drove him from seminary and begins to accept the gifts of community that enclose his answers. The chair gives him a perfect perch from which to listen, to talk, and to see, as life spends itself all around. In this novel full of remarkable characters, he tells his story that becomes the story of his town and its transcendent membership. "This is a book about Heaven," as Jayber says, "but I must say too that it has been a close call. For I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally be a book about Hell -- where we fail to love one another, where we hate and destroy one another for reasons abundantly provided or for righteousness' sake or for pleasure, where we destroy the things we need the most, where we see no hope and have no faith... where we must lose everything to know what we have had." But as his life trnaspires he sees more each day that hope provides -- for him and for those around him. This beautiful, lyrical love story leads us to realize, with John Dryden that "Love is love's reward."