Philip Gulley spent nine books exploring the ups and downs in the life of Sam Gardner, fictional pastor of the local Quaker church in Harmony, Ind. After taking a brief hiatus from the Harmony series, Gulley reintroduced Sam, his wife, Barbara, and their two sons in A Place Called Hope, in which Sam wound up as the last-minute substitute officiate at a same-sex wedding. This created quite a stir, ultimately uprooting the family from Harmony to Hope, Ind.
In A Lesson in Hope, Sam and Barbara's sons have flown the coop--one in college, one serving in the military. While Pastor Sam's focus is on managing and growing the Hope Friends Meeting Church, a 98-year-old member, Olive Charles, dies and leaves her million-dollar estate to the meeting. Everyone in the parish--and even the larger Quaker Church--has designs on how to spend the money. Sam faces a host of additional complications when Olive's long-lost niece takes legal action challenging the bequest. Add to this a member fascinated by girlie magazines, another withering from Alzheimer's. Sam flirts with temptations of his own, one son dates a Methodist, the other dabbles in Mormonism, and Sam's high-maintenance parents contemplate a move to Hope.
Gulley's continuing good-natured and humorous series examines the often-peculiar nuances and drama of contemporary small-town life, and the entertaining quirks and foibles of a memorable cast of recurrent characters who try to keep the faith--and their wits about them. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines