Rabbi Saunderson

Twelve years of unsuccessful applications have left Jeremiah Saunderson with a formidable reputation for scholarship and few prospects of a parish. When he finally reaches Kilbogie, after wandering towards Drumtochty in a haze of theological thought, a local plague of field mice gives him the subject for his trial sermon. Ian Maclaren builds this Scottish parish novel around a learned, absent-minded minister and a community that takes the length and substance of preaching very seriously.

The comedy of Saunderson's arrival sits beside a more painful concern: how people who care for one another can be divided by religious conviction. In a later scene, Carmichael's combative sermon about the love of God wounds the older minister, whose affection and strict doctrines pull him in different directions. Scottish speech, village judgments and the practical complications of church life give the book its particular texture. Readers interested in faith, friendship and the human cost of argument will find all three closely entwined.