Even So

Written by Lauren B. Davis

Narrated by Linda Jones

A novel that explores the challenge and necessity of loving difficult people.Angela Morrison has it all. She’s married to a wealthy man, adores her son, grows orchids, and volunteers at Our Daily Bread Food Pantry. What more could she
want? More—much more. And she’s willing to risk everything after meeting Carsten, the landscaper with the glacier-blue eyes.

Sister Eileen, who runs Our Daily Bread Food Pantry, struggles with the silence of God and harbours a secret she believes is unforgivable. She yearns to convince Angela she is loved by God, despite her selfishness and destructive behaviour, but
in order for that to be authentic Eileen must learn to love her first, and that’s no easy task—especially after Angela causes a terrible tragedy. Through the crucible of their relationship, Angela and Eileen discover how caring for the most difficult
among us and practising forgiveness, no matter how painful, opens a door to the miracle of transformation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781980082569

Lauren B. Davis

LAUREN B. DAVIS is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels The Stubborn Season, The Radiant City, Our Daily Bread—which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named a best book of the year by both The Globe and Mail and The Boston Globe—and The Empty Room, as well as two collections of short stories, Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives and An Unrehearsed Desire. Born in Montreal, she now lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Web: laurenbdavis.com Facebook: Lauren B. Davis, Author Twitter: @Laurenbdavis

Reviews for Even So

[thesmellofbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book very quickly, by shoving other obligations out of the way. It is beautifully written, at times painfully honest, and exhilarating in its ability to go where we are reluctant to go and bring us through overjoyed at having been there.My hat is off to you, Lauren B. Davis. I now I want to read all of your books.

[icolford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The uniquely challenging (and fascinating) recent novels of Lauren B. Davis inhabit a blasted moral landscape of human weakness and depravity. In Our Daily Bread and The Empty Room, she fearlessly chronicles the myriad ways in which people damage themselves and hurt one another as they go about satisfying cravings and fleeing responsibilities. The world of these novels is a contemporary one filled with temptation. However, Davis is first and foremost a storyteller, primarily concerned with immersing her reader in an engaging drama. She is not interested in preaching or moralizing. Even So is another example of her consummate art. Chic, attractive forty-something Angela Morrison lives a pampered life in affluent Princeton, New Jersey. Married to Philip, a successful financier many years older than her, Angela is comfortable but bored. It is a dangerous sort of boredom that afflicts Angela, the kind that breeds bitterness and frustration. Fed up with her husband’s priggishness, Angela wants to feel young again. Her craving is for romance and adventure. But Angela also has a good heart: she loves her son Connor (who is just about to start university), and volunteers at Our Daily Bread Food Pantry in nearby Trenton, a town that long ago lost its industrial base and where poverty and homelessness are rampant. The Pantry is run by Sister Eileen. Sister Eileen is suffering from a crisis of faith: deeply troubled by God’s silence and tormented by guilt over an unforgivable act from her youth. Sister Eileen does not like Angela—she thinks the woman is spoiled and irresponsible—but her disapproval serves no purpose: she must, for the good of the Pantry and to remain true to her faith, view Angela through the rosy glow of God’s love. When an opportunity arises to turn the vacant lot next to the Pantry into a community garden, Eileen asks Angela to oversee the project along with Carsten, a professional landscaper. It turns out Carsten is exactly what Angela is looking for—unattached, attractive, attentive, with a mysterious air of foreignness—and a playful flirtation quickly blossoms into a full-blown affair. When Carsten gives her keys to his house, Angela begins to imagine their future together. Angela Morrison’s downfall, when it comes, is nobody’s fault but her own: the result of overblown, unjustified expectations and wilful blindness. But when her reckless behaviour turns tragic, she seeks an unlikely saviour in Sister Eileen. It is not unusual for Lauren Davis to take risks in her fiction—to place weak and reprehensible characters front and centre. In Even So, she has written a novel about a profoundly selfish woman who acts to satisfy her own desires with little regard for consequences or the pain she causes others. When those desires are thwarted, she becomes petulant and self-destructive. But Davis knows what she’s doing. The story she tells is suspenseful and moving, characters and setting are vividly drawn with precise attention to detail, the psychology of the novel is persuasive, her prose sparkles. The novel’s lesson is embedded in the drama and arises naturally from the action. Despite her main character’s deceitful nature and personal failures, we are drawn into a compulsively readable narrative that is impossible to put down. Readers may not like Angela Morrison, but Lauren Davis ensures they will be transfixed by her story.