This is a gentle, mystical, tale about a young clergyman – the Reverend Patience Pontius – who does not really know his own mind. He should marry the girl who has been picked out for him and settle into a small living in the country. But something keeps calling to him. He should facilitate communications between the Spirit of the Sky and his parishioners. But something calling itself the Spirit of the Sea keeps getting in the way.
There is a literary genre called ‘cosy mystery’: I’m going to start a new genre for this book, and call it a ‘cosy quest’. There are elements of fantasy in it: the Reverend lives in a world we recognise (a sort of generic eighteenth century) but after he begins searching for the Spirit of the Sea he begins to weave in and out of a more imaginary landscape.
The reader follows the extremely naïve Reverend Pontius as he is persuaded to re-evaluate exactly which Spirit he should be serving. To do this he goes on a journey from anxious safety through terror and exhilaration to a sort of homecoming. The journey is never less than delightful. The adventures he has along the way are both funny and heart-wrenching by turn. His eventual destination is something we might all hope for. The takeaway of the tale is perhaps that no matter how diffident or uncertain we may be about the direction our lives should take, we can still make choices and be masters of our own destiny. Judi Moore
